====== File Changes ====== Watch for changes in files: sudo apt-get install inotify-tools inotifywait -e modify,create,delete,move -r -m /path/to/watch To do something with the result, the following could be used inotifywait -e modify,create,delete,move -r -m | while read line; do something_with $line; done According to the documentation for inotifywatch, the default limit is 8192 watch descriptors, and you can increase it by writing the new value to /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches. On Linux Mint 22 with Surface Kernel, this appears to be set to 29301. Watch for dconf changes: dconf watch /