How to Change the Priority of a Process

You can raise or lower the priority of a command or a process by changing the nice number. To lower the priority of a process:

The first and second commands increase the nice number by four units (the default); and the third command increases the nice by ten units, lowering the priority of the process.

The following commands raise the priority of the command by lowering the nice number.

To raise the priority of a process:

The above commands raise the priority of the command, command_name, by lowering the nice number. Note that in the second case, the two minus signs are required.