Quickly display man page descriptions with the whatis command. Access concise summaries and detailed information using various options. Free online tool, no registration required.

whatis

Display one-line descriptions from manual pages. More information: https://manned.org/whatis.

  • Display a description from a man page:

whatis {{command}}

  • Don’t cut the description off at the end of the line:

whatis --long {{command}}

  • Display descriptions for all commands matching a glob:

whatis --wildcard {{net*}}

  • Search man page descriptions with a regex:

whatis --regex '{{wish[0-9]\.[0-9]}}'

  • Display descriptions in a specific language:

whatis --locale={{en}} {{command}}