The priority of a process determines the share of time the process is alotted on a system's one or more processors (CPUs or cores). A nice process, or one with a higher nice value, concedes priority to other processes. Adjusting the nice value will increase or decrease the scheduling priority.

The lower the nice value, the higher the priority of the process. The nice value ranges from -20 (low nice, higher priority) to 20 (lower priority). The default value of nice is usually 0.