# Linux commands: jobs

> Learn how the Linux jobs command lists the background jobs you started with &, giving you the job number for fg and showing process ids with jobs -l.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2020-09-12 | Topics: [CLI](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/cli/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/linux-command-jobs/

When we run a command in Linux / macOS, we can set it to run in the background using the `&` symbol after the command.

For example we can run `top` in the background:

```bash
top &
```

This is very handy for long-running programs.

We can get back to that program using the `fg` command. This works fine if we just have one job in the background, otherwise we need to use the job number: `fg 1`, `fg 2` and so on.

To get the job number, we use the `jobs` command.

Say we run `top &` and then `top -o mem &`, so we have 2 top instances running. `jobs` will tell us this:

![Terminal output showing jobs command listing two stopped processes: job 1 running top and job 2 running top -o mem](https://flaviocopes.com/images/linux-command-jobs/Screen_Shot_2020-09-03_at_11.49.42.png)

Now we can switch back to one of those using `fg <jobid>`. To stop the program again we can hit `cmd-Z`.

Running `jobs -l` will also print the process id of each job.

> This command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and anywhere you have a UNIX environment