Debugging tools in android

To tackle the challenges of Android app development, especially when things go sideways, here are the detailed steps to effectively use debugging tools in Android:

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Debugging Android applications is akin to detective work.

You’re sifting through clues, identifying patterns, and pinpointing the root cause of an issue.

Whether it’s a crashed app, a UI glitch, or an unexpected data flow, having the right tools in your arsenal is crucial for an efficient workflow.

From integrated development environments IDEs like Android Studio to command-line utilities and performance profilers, a comprehensive understanding of these tools can significantly cut down your debugging time and elevate your development efficiency.

This guide will walk you through the essential debugging tools, providing practical insights and actionable steps to resolve even the most stubborn bugs.

The Android Studio Debugger: Your Primary Workbench

The Android Studio debugger is the backbone of most Android development workflows.

It’s deeply integrated into the IDE, offering a rich set of features to inspect your code’s execution, analyze variables, and control the program flow.

Think of it as your high-tech magnifying glass and surgical tools, all in one place.

Setting Up Breakpoints

Breakpoints are your primary way to pause execution and examine the state of your application at a specific point in the code.

• Line Breakpoints: The most common type. Click in the gutter next to a line of code to set a breakpoint. When execution reaches this line, it will pause.
• Method Breakpoints: Pause execution when a specific method is entered or exited. Useful for tracking method calls.
• Exception Breakpoints: Pause execution whenever a specific exception is thrown, whether caught or uncaught. This is invaluable for identifying the exact moment an error occurs, even if your try-catch blocks are extensive.
• Conditional Breakpoints: Add conditions to your breakpoints. The debugger will only pause if the specified condition evaluates to true. This is extremely powerful for debugging loops or situations where you only care about a specific state e.g., if i == 100.
• Logging Breakpoints: Instead of pausing, these breakpoints log a message to the console when hit. Great for tracing execution paths without interrupting the app flow.

Navigating the Debugger

Once a breakpoint is hit, Android Studio’s debugger pane becomes active, providing several options to control execution and inspect data. Test old version of edge

• Resume Program F9 / Cmd+Option+R: Continues execution until the next breakpoint or the end of the program.
• Step Over F8 / Cmd+Option+F8: Executes the current line of code and moves to the next line without stepping into method calls. This is your go-to for quickly moving through code you trust.
• Step Into F7 / Cmd+Option+F7: Executes the current line and, if it contains a method call, steps into that method’s code. Ideal for deep into unfamiliar or complex functions.
• Step Out Shift+F8 / Cmd+Shift+Option+F7: Executes the remaining lines of the current method and returns to the calling method. Useful when you’ve stepped into a method and realize you don’t need to examine its full execution.
• Force Step Into Shift+Alt+F7 / Cmd+Shift+Option+F7: Similar to “Step Into,” but it will step into any method, including those from system libraries or third-party SDKs, even if they’re typically optimized away.
• Drop Frame: This advanced feature allows you to “rewind” the execution stack to a previous frame. If you accidentally stepped too far or want to re-evaluate a piece of code, this can save you from restarting the debug session.

Inspecting Variables and Expressions

The ability to inspect the values of variables and evaluate expressions is central to understanding your app’s state.

• Variables Pane: Displays all variables in the current scope, including local variables, method parameters, and instance fields. You can expand objects to see their internal state.
• Watches Pane: Allows you to add specific variables or complex expressions to monitor them constantly. This is particularly useful for tracking how a variable changes over time or for evaluating custom expressions that aren’t naturally part of the variables pane.
• Evaluate Expression Alt+F8 / Cmd+Option+F8: A powerful feature that lets you run any Java/Kotlin code snippet in the current execution context. You can call methods, create objects, and modify variables, making it an excellent tool for testing assumptions or even hot-fixing values during a debug session. For instance, you might use it to call myObject.debugPrintState or someVariable = newValue..

Android Debug Bridge ADB: The Command-Line Powerhouse

ADB is a versatile command-line tool that acts as a bridge between your development machine and an Android device or emulator.

While Android Studio provides a GUI for many ADB functions, understanding the command-line interface offers greater flexibility and control, especially for automation or specific debugging scenarios not covered by the IDE.

Basic ADB Commands for Device Management

ADB is fundamental for interacting with devices.

• adb devices: Lists all connected Android devices and emulators, along with their serial numbers. This is your first stop to ensure your device is recognized. A common output might look like:

  List of devices attached
  emulator-5554   device
  ABC123DEF456    device
  

• adb install <path_to_apk>: Installs an APK file onto the connected device. Essential for testing builds.
• adb uninstall <package_name>: Uninstalls an application from the device.
• adb push <local_path> <remote_path>: Copies a file or directory from your computer to the device. Useful for pushing test data or configuration files.
• adb pull <remote_path> <local_path>: Copies a file or directory from the device to your computer. Great for pulling database files, logs, or shared preferences for offline analysis.

Logcat: The Debugger’s Diary

Logcat is the primary logging mechanism for Android. Change time zone on iphone

It’s where your app, the Android system, and other processes write their messages. ADB provides direct access to Logcat.

• adb logcat: Displays the entire Logcat output in your terminal. This can be overwhelming.
• adb logcat -s <tag>: Filters Logcat messages by a specific tag. For example, adb logcat -s MyActivityTag will show only messages from your MyActivityTag.
• adb logcat *:E: Filters messages to show only errors E for Error. Other levels include V Verbose, D Debug, I Info, W Warn, and F Fatal.
• adb logcat -c: Clears the entire Logcat buffer on the device. Useful before starting a test to ensure you only see relevant messages.
• adb logcat > logfile.txt: Redirects Logcat output to a file, allowing for later analysis.
• Example Usage: When you encounter an app crash, the first thing you should do is check Logcat for stack traces and error messages. Your app will likely print messages using Log.d, Log.e, etc., which are then visible in Logcat.

Shell Commands for Deeper System Inspection

ADB shell gives you direct access to the device’s Unix shell, allowing you to run various commands for system inspection.

• adb shell: Opens a shell session on the device.
• dumpsys: A powerful command that provides system service information.
  • adb shell dumpsys activity top: Shows the top activity in the stack.
  • adb shell dumpsys package <package_name>: Provides detailed information about a specific app package, including permissions, activities, services, and more.
  • adb shell dumpsys meminfo <package_name>: Shows memory usage statistics for a specific app. Invaluable for memory leak debugging. A typical meminfo output might show:

     MEMINFO in pid 12345  
        Pss: 20MB
        Java Heap: 15MB
        Native Heap: 3MB
        ...
    

• am Activity Manager: Command to interact with the Activity Manager.
  • adb shell am start -n <package_name>/<activity_name>: Starts a specific activity in your app. Useful for testing deep links or specific app states.
• pm Package Manager: Command to interact with the Package Manager.
  • adb shell pm list packages: Lists all installed packages.
  • adb shell pm path <package_name>: Shows the path to the APK file.
• settings: Command to interact with system settings.
  • adb shell settings put global e.g., adb shell settings put global transition_animation_scale 0 to disable animations for faster testing.

Android Profiler: Performance and Resource Deep Dive

The Android Profiler, integrated into Android Studio, is an indispensable tool for identifying performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, network issues, and power consumption problems.

It provides real-time data and historical analysis of your app’s resource usage, allowing you to optimize your application for a smoother user experience.

CPU Profiler: Identifying Performance Bottlenecks

A slow app is a bad app. Automated test tools comparison

The CPU Profiler helps you understand where your app spends its time.

• Callstack Analysis: Records method calls and their execution times, allowing you to pinpoint computationally expensive operations. You can choose different recording configurations:
  • Sampled: Records method samples at regular intervals. Good for a general overview.
  • Traced Methods: Instruments your code to record method entry and exit. Provides precise timing but can introduce overhead.
  • System Trace: Records fine-grained details about how your app interacts with system resources, including CPU scheduling, disk I/O, and thread states. Crucial for identifying janky UI or slow background operations.
• Flame Chart and Top Down/Bottom Up Trees: Visualizations to help analyze call stacks. Flame charts show the time spent in each method, with wider bars indicating more time. Top-down trees show the call path from the top of the stack, while bottom-up trees group methods by their total time, regardless of their caller.
• Common Use Cases: Identify long-running operations on the main thread causing ANRs, inefficient algorithms, or excessive object creation. For example, if you see a method taking 500ms on the main thread, that’s a prime candidate for optimization, perhaps by offloading it to a background thread.

Memory Profiler: Hunting Down Memory Leaks and Bloat

Memory issues are a common cause of crashes Out Of Memory errors and sluggish performance.

The Memory Profiler helps you visualize memory usage and identify leaks.

• Heap Dump: Takes a snapshot of your app’s memory at a specific point in time, showing all allocated objects. This is your primary tool for finding memory leaks. When analyzing a heap dump, look for:
  • Dominator Tree: Shows which objects are preventing other objects from being garbage collected. This is often where you find the root of a memory leak.
  • Shallow vs. Retained Size: Shallow size is the memory an object directly occupies. retained size is the memory it holds onto, including objects it references that wouldn’t be garbage collected without it.
• Allocation Tracking: Records every object allocation as it happens. This helps identify “churn” – excessive object creation and garbage collection, which can lead to performance hiccups.
• Common Use Cases:
  • Activity/Fragment Leaks: A common scenario is when an Activity or Fragment is destroyed, but a long-running background task or an anonymous inner class holds a strong reference to it, preventing it from being garbage collected. You’d see its objects still present in the heap dump after it should have been gone.
  • Bitmap Leaks: Large Bitmap objects are notorious for consuming significant memory. The profiler helps track their allocation and deallocation.
  • Data Structure Bloat: Identifying oversized collections or inefficient data structures storing unnecessary amounts of data.
• Example Analysis: If your app’s memory usage continuously climbs even after navigating away from certain screens, it’s a strong indication of a memory leak. A heap dump will likely reveal the leaked objects.

Network Profiler: Debugging Network Requests

The Network Profiler visualizes all network activity, allowing you to inspect request and response payloads, timing, and connection details.

• Real-time Traffic: Shows all network requests made by your app, including images, JSON data, and other resources. Code review tools

• Request/Response Details: For each request, you can inspect the URL, method GET, POST, etc., status code e.g., 200 OK, 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error, request headers, request body, response headers, and response body.

• Timing: Provides a timeline of when requests started, when data was received, and when the request completed. This helps identify slow network calls or server-side delays.

  • Incorrect Endpoints: Verifying that your app is hitting the correct API endpoints.
  • Malformed Requests: Checking if your request headers or body are correctly formatted.
  • API Response Issues: Inspecting the server’s response to understand data parsing problems or server-side errors.
  • Slow Network Performance: Pinpointing which network calls are taking too long, potentially leading to UI freezes or delays.

• Data Example: A successful HTTP 200 response with a JSON payload might look like:
  URL: https://api.example.com/data
  Method: GET
  Status: 200 OK

  Headers: { Content-Type: application/json, … }

  Response Body: { “items”: } Test case templates

Energy Profiler: Optimizing Battery Usage

The Energy Profiler helps you understand how your app consumes battery power by monitoring CPU, network, and location services usage.

While it doesn’t provide precise power consumption numbers, it highlights components that contribute significantly to battery drain.

• Timeline: Shows a timeline of power-related events, such as wakelocks, jobs, and alarms.
• CPU Activity: Identifies periods of high CPU usage, which can be a major source of battery drain.
• Network Activity: Highlights excessive network usage, especially frequent background data transfers.
• Location Requests: Shows when your app requests location updates and for how long. Constant high-accuracy location requests can quickly drain a battery.
  • Background Tasks: Identifying inefficient background services or WorkManager jobs that are waking the device unnecessarily.
  • Excessive Wakelocks: Pinpointing wakelocks that prevent the device from entering a low-power state.
  • Frequent Location Polling: Optimizing location updates to only occur when necessary and with appropriate accuracy settings.
• Optimization Tip: Minimize background work, batch network requests, use JobScheduler or WorkManager for efficient background tasks, and optimize location updates e.g., using FUSED_LOCATION_PROVIDER with PRIORITY_BALANCED_POWER_ACCURACY.

Layout Inspector and Hierarchy Viewer: UI Debugging Powerhouses

When your UI isn’t rendering as expected, or you’re struggling with layout performance, the Layout Inspector and Hierarchy Viewer are your best friends.

These tools allow you to inspect the entire view hierarchy of your running application, examine properties of individual views, and identify rendering issues.

Layout Inspector

The Layout Inspector, integrated into Android Studio, provides a real-time, interactive view of your app’s UI. Whats new in wcag 2 2

• 3D Visualization: Renders your layout in a 3D perspective, allowing you to see overlapping views and view depths clearly. This is incredibly useful for spotting views that are hidden or partially obscured.
• Component Tree: Shows the hierarchical structure of your layout, listing all views and view groups. You can select any view in the tree to inspect its properties.
• Properties Pane: Displays all attributes of the selected view, such as layout_width, layout_height, padding, margin, text, background, visibility, and more. You can even modify some of these properties in real-time to see how they affect the layout.
  • Invisible Views: Discovering why a view isn’t showing up e.g., visibility set to GONE or INVISIBLE, or width/height set to 0.
  • Incorrect Margins/Padding: Visually inspecting how margins and padding affect component spacing.
  • Overlapping Views: Using the 3D view to identify views that are unexpectedly overlapping each other, which can lead to touch event issues or visual clutter.
  • Incorrect Constraints ConstraintLayout: Quickly identifying missing or incorrect constraints that lead to views being positioned unexpectedly.
• Example Debugging: If a button isn’t clickable, you might use the Layout Inspector to see if another view is positioned on top of it, intercepting touch events. Or, if text is cut off, you can check its width, height, and ellipsize properties.

Hierarchy Viewer Legacy, but Concepts Remain

While the direct Hierarchy Viewer tool is largely superseded by the modern Layout Inspector within Android Studio, understanding its principles is still valuable.

It helped visualize the nesting of views, which is crucial for identifying deep hierarchies that can negatively impact UI performance.

• Deep Hierarchies: A deeply nested view hierarchy e.g., a LinearLayout inside another LinearLayout inside a ScrollView, etc. can lead to increased layout and drawing times, resulting in a janky UI.
• Overdraw: When the same pixels are drawn multiple times, it’s called overdraw. This wastes GPU resources. The Hierarchy Viewer and now GPU Overdraw in Developer Options helps identify areas of high overdraw.
• Common Performance Issues:
  • Redundant Views: Unnecessary parent views or empty views that add to the hierarchy depth without providing visual benefit.
  • Complex Custom Views: Custom views that perform extensive calculations or drawing operations.
  • Alpha Overlap: Transparent views stacked on top of each other increase rendering complexity.
• Optimization: Aim for flatter view hierarchies. Use ConstraintLayout as much as possible, as it’s designed to create complex layouts with fewer nested view groups. Optimize custom onDraw methods, and reduce overdraw where possible e.g., by setting background on the root view rather than inner ones.

Stetho and LeakCanary: Third-Party Debugging Powerhouses

While Android Studio and ADB provide a robust set of tools, the Android open-source community has developed incredibly useful libraries that enhance the debugging experience, especially for network and memory issues.

Stetho by Facebook

Stetho is a powerful debug bridge that allows you to inspect your Android application using the Chrome Developer Tools.

It provides a browser-based interface for network inspection, database viewing, shared preferences editing, and more. Browserstack named to forbes 2024 cloud 100

• Network Inspection: All HTTP/HTTPS network traffic is visible in the Chrome DevTools Network tab. You can inspect requests, responses, headers, and payloads, just like debugging a web page. This is incredibly convenient compared to sifting through Logcat or other tools for network activity.
• Database Inspection: Access and browse SQLite databases directly from the Chrome DevTools Resources tab. You can view table schemas, query data, and even execute custom SQL queries. This is a must for debugging data storage issues.
• Shared Preferences Viewing/Editing: View and modify Shared Preferences directly in the Chrome DevTools Resources tab. This is perfect for debugging app settings, user preferences, or persistent state issues.
• View Hierarchy: Although not as robust as Android Studio’s Layout Inspector, Stetho can show a basic view hierarchy.
• Installation: Add the Stetho dependency to your build.gradle usually debugImplementation, and initialize it in your Application class:

  
  
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.stetho:stetho:1.6.0'
  
  
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.stetho:stetho-okhttp3:1.6.0' // If using OkHttp
  ```java
  // In your Application.onCreate
  if BuildConfig.DEBUG {
      Stetho.initializeWithDefaultsthis.
  }
  

• Usage: Run your app, open Chrome, and navigate to chrome://inspect. Your device/emulator should appear, and you can click “inspect” to open the DevTools for your app.
• Benefits: Stetho centralizes many debugging tasks into a familiar web browser interface, making it very intuitive for developers accustomed to web debugging. It’s particularly strong for network and data persistence debugging.

LeakCanary by Square

LeakCanary is an automatic memory leak detection library.

It’s designed to be simple to integrate and use, providing instant notifications and detailed stack traces when a memory leak is detected.

• Automatic Leak Detection: LeakCanary monitors your Activities, Fragments, Views, and other objects for leaks. When an object should have been garbage collected but isn’t, LeakCanary triggers a heap dump.

• Clear Notifications: When a leak is found, LeakCanary displays a clear notification with a description of the leaked object and the chain of references preventing its garbage collection.

• Detailed Stack Traces: The notification often links to a detailed analysis within the LeakCanary app or directly in Logcat, showing the “leak trace” – the exact path of references that are holding onto the leaked object. This is incredibly valuable for understanding why an object is leaking. Browserstack launches iphone 15 on day 0 behind the scenes

• Installation: Add LeakCanary to your build.gradle only for debug builds to avoid overhead in production:

  DebugImplementation ‘com.squareup.leakcanary:leakcanary-android:2.10’

• Usage: Once integrated, simply run your app and use it normally. LeakCanary works in the background. If you cause a leak e.g., by rotating a device or navigating away from a screen that holds a static reference to an Activity, LeakCanary will notify you.

• Benefits: LeakCanary automates one of the most frustrating aspects of Android debugging: memory leak detection. It makes finding and fixing leaks much faster and more reliable, significantly improving app stability and performance. It’s a “must-have” tool for any serious Android developer.

Debugging Techniques and Best Practices

Having the tools is one thing. knowing how to use them effectively is another. Xss testing

These techniques and best practices will elevate your debugging game.

Effective Logging

Logging is often the first line of defense in debugging. Use it wisely.

• Strategic Logging: Don’t just Log.d everything. Log critical events, variable values at key points, and error conditions.
• Meaningful Tags: Use specific tags for your Log messages e.g., Log.d"MyActivity", "User clicked button" so you can easily filter Logcat.
• Error Logging: Always log exceptions and errors using Log.e or Log.wtf What a Terrible Failure and include the stack trace.
• Disable in Production: Ensure you remove or disable debug logging in production builds using BuildConfig.DEBUG or ProGuard rules. Excessive logging can impact performance and expose sensitive information.

Reproducing Bugs Consistently

The cornerstone of effective debugging is the ability to reliably reproduce the bug.

• Isolation: Try to isolate the problematic code or scenario. Can you reproduce the bug in a minimal example or a specific test case?
• Steps to Reproduce: Document the exact steps that lead to the bug. This is crucial for collaborative debugging and future reference. For example:
  1. Open app.
  2. Navigate to “Settings” screen.
  3. Toggle “Dark Mode” switch.
  4. Rotate device.
  5. Observe crash.
• Edge Cases: Test edge cases: empty input, very large input, network connectivity changes, permissions denied, low memory, device rotation, backgrounding/foregrounding the app.

Using Developer Options

Android’s Developer Options provide a treasure trove of settings for debugging and performance analysis.

• Enable Developer Options: Go to Settings > About phone and tap “Build number” seven times.
• USB Debugging: Essential for ADB to communicate with your device.
• Stay Awake: Keeps the screen on while charging, useful during long debug sessions.
• Show Layout Bounds: Draws lines around all view margins and padding, revealing their exact boundaries. Invaluable for UI layout debugging.
• Force RTL Layout Direction: Test how your UI behaves in Right-to-Left RTL languages.
• Profile HWUI Rendering: Shows a bar graph on the screen representing the time taken to render frames. Spikes indicate jank.
• GPU Overdraw: Colors sections of the screen to indicate how many times pixels are drawn. Green 1x, Light Red 2x, Dark Red 3x, Blue 4x+. Aim for green or light red.
• Don’t Keep Activities: Destroys every activity as soon as the user leaves it. Great for testing how your app handles activity lifecycle events and state preservation.
• Background Process Limit: Simulates low memory conditions by limiting the number of background processes. Useful for testing how your app behaves when killed by the system.

Debugging with Test-Driven Development TDD

While not a direct debugging tool, adopting a TDD approach can significantly reduce the amount of time you spend debugging. Cypress cucumber preprocessor

• Write Tests First: Before writing feature code, write automated tests that define the expected behavior.
• Catch Bugs Early: Tests fail immediately if the new code breaks existing functionality, preventing bugs from propagating.
• Regression Prevention: A robust test suite acts as a safety net, ensuring that future changes don’t reintroduce old bugs.
• Example: If you have a bug where a list isn’t populating correctly, you’d write a unit test that asserts the list’s content after a specific operation. This test will fail, guide your debugging, and then pass once the bug is fixed, ensuring it doesn’t reappear.

Advanced Debugging Scenarios

Some bugs require more specialized approaches.

Remote Debugging

Debugging an app running on a remote device, either via Wi-Fi or when a USB connection isn’t feasible.

• ADB over Wi-Fi:

  1. Connect your device to your computer via USB.

  2. adb tcpip 5555: Restarts ADB in TCP mode on port 5555. Browserstack newsletter april 2024

  3. Disconnect USB.

  4. adb connect <device_ip_address>:5555: Connects to the device over Wi-Fi.

• Firebase Crashlytics: For production apps, Crashlytics now part of Firebase automatically collects crash reports and non-fatal errors, providing detailed stack traces and device information. This is crucial for understanding bugs that only occur in the wild.

• Google Play Console Vitals: The Play Console provides insights into app performance metrics like ANRs, crashes, and excessive wake locks from actual user data.

Debugging Native C/C++ Code

For apps using the NDK, debugging native code requires specific configurations. Browserstack newsletter december 2023

• LLDB: Android Studio integrates with LLDB, the debugger for native code. You set breakpoints in your C/C++ source files just like Java/Kotlin.
• CMake/ndk-build configuration: Ensure your build system CMake or ndk-build is correctly configured to generate debuggable native libraries.
• Symbols: Ensure you have the correct debug symbols .so files with debug info for your native libraries.
• logcat for native logs: Native code can also write to Logcat using __android_log_print.

Debugging App Crashes and ANRs Application Not Responding

These are critical issues that significantly impact user experience.

• ANRs: Occur when the main thread is blocked for too long typically 5 seconds for input events or broadcast receivers.
  • Logcat Analysis: Look for ANR in <package_name> messages in Logcat. They often include stack traces of the main thread.
  • CPU Profiler: Use the CPU Profiler especially System Trace to identify what’s blocking the main thread. Look for long-running operations or excessive I/O.
  • Strict Mode: Enable Strict Mode in your debug builds StrictMode.setThreadPolicy, StrictMode.setVmPolicy to detect accidental disk/network access on the main thread or other potential issues.
• Crashes Exceptions:
  • Logcat Analysis: The fastest way to identify the cause of a crash is to look for the stack trace in Logcat. The line numbers and class names will point you to the problematic code.
  • Debugger: If you can reproduce the crash, set a breakpoint just before the crash point e.g., before a null pointer dereference and step through the code to identify the exact cause.
  • Firebase Crashlytics: As mentioned, invaluable for production crash reporting.

Debugging is an art and a science.

By mastering these tools and techniques, you’ll not only resolve bugs faster but also gain a deeper understanding of your Android application’s inner workings, ultimately leading to more robust and higher-quality software.

Remember, persistence and a systematic approach are your greatest assets.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the primary debugging tools available in Android Studio?

The primary debugging tools in Android Studio include the integrated Debugger for breakpoints, variable inspection, and step-through execution, the Android Profiler for CPU, memory, network, and energy analysis, and the Layout Inspector for UI hierarchy and property inspection. These are seamlessly integrated into the IDE for a comprehensive debugging experience. React app testing with jest

How do I set a breakpoint in Android Studio?

To set a breakpoint in Android Studio, simply click in the gutter the area to the left of the line numbers next to the line of code where you want execution to pause.

A red circle will appear, indicating the breakpoint is set.

What is the difference between “Step Over” and “Step Into” in the debugger?

“Step Over” executes the current line of code and moves to the next line without stepping into any method calls on that line.

“Step Into” executes the current line and, if it contains a method call, dives into the first line of that method’s implementation.

How can I inspect variables during a debug session?

When the debugger pauses at a breakpoint, you can inspect variables in the “Variables” pane. Azure cicd pipeline

You can also add specific variables or complex expressions to the “Watches” pane for continuous monitoring, or use the “Evaluate Expression” feature Alt+F8 / Cmd+Option+F8 to run custom code snippets and see their results.

What is ADB and what is it used for?

ADB Android Debug Bridge is a command-line tool that facilitates communication between your development machine and an Android device or emulator.

It’s used for installing/uninstalling apps, pushing/pulling files, viewing Logcat, running shell commands on the device, and much more.

How do I view logs in Android?

Logs in Android are viewed through Logcat.

In Android Studio, there’s a dedicated Logcat window. Best language for web development

From the command line, you can use adb logcat to view and filter logs.

What is the Android Profiler for?

The Android Profiler is an integrated tool in Android Studio used for analyzing your app’s performance and resource usage.

It helps identify issues related to CPU usage, memory leaks, network activity, and energy consumption, allowing you to optimize your application.

How can I detect memory leaks in my Android app?

The Android Memory Profiler, especially its Heap Dump feature, is crucial for detecting memory leaks.

Additionally, integrating the third-party library LeakCanary provides automatic, real-time memory leak detection with detailed reports.

What does the CPU Profiler show?

The CPU Profiler shows how your app utilizes the CPU.

It records method calls and their execution times, helping you identify performance bottlenecks, long-running operations on the main thread, and inefficient code that might cause UI jank.

How do I check network requests made by my app?

The Android Network Profiler in Android Studio visualizes all network activity, allowing you to inspect request/response payloads, headers, and timing.

For a browser-based approach, you can use Stetho, which integrates with Chrome Developer Tools for network inspection.

What is the purpose of the Layout Inspector?

The Layout Inspector in Android Studio provides a real-time, interactive 3D visualization of your app’s UI hierarchy.

It allows you to inspect properties of individual views, identify overlapping elements, and debug layout-related issues.

Can I debug an Android app wirelessly?

Yes, you can debug an Android app wirelessly using ADB over Wi-Fi.

You first establish a USB connection to enable TCP/IP mode for ADB on the device, then disconnect the USB and connect via the device’s IP address.

What are “Developer Options” on an Android device and how do they help debugging?

Developer Options are a set of advanced settings on Android devices that provide tools for debugging and performance analysis.

They include options like “USB Debugging,” “Show Layout Bounds,” “GPU Overdraw,” and “Don’t Keep Activities,” all of which are immensely helpful for developers.

How do I enable Developer Options on my Android phone?

To enable Developer Options, go to Settings > About phone and repeatedly tap on the “Build number” usually 7 times until a message appears confirming that Developer Options have been enabled.

What is Stetho and why would I use it?

Stetho is a powerful debug bridge by Facebook that allows you to use Chrome Developer Tools to inspect your Android application.

It’s invaluable for network inspection, viewing/editing SQLite databases, and managing Shared Preferences directly from a browser.

What is LeakCanary used for?

LeakCanary is an automatic memory leak detection library developed by Square.

It simplifies the process of finding memory leaks by automatically analyzing your app’s memory and notifying you with detailed reports when a leak is detected, making debugging much faster.

How can I debug ANRs Application Not Responding errors?

To debug ANRs, check Logcat for “ANR in” messages, which often provide a stack trace of the main thread.

Use the Android CPU Profiler especially System Trace to pinpoint long-running operations blocking the main thread.

Enabling Strict Mode can also help detect potential ANR causes early.

What is Strict Mode in Android debugging?

Strict Mode is a developer tool that detects accidental disk or network access on the application’s main thread and other potential performance issues.

You enable it in your debug builds to catch these violations early, preventing ANRs and improving app responsiveness.

How do I debug native C/C++ code in an Android app?

Debugging native C/C++ code in Android Studio is done using LLDB, the integrated native debugger.

You set breakpoints in your C/C++ source files, and ensure your CMakeLists.txt or Android.mk is configured for debuggable native libraries.

Why is consistent bug reproduction important for debugging?

Consistently reproducing a bug is crucial because it allows you to reliably observe the issue, set breakpoints at the precise moments leading to the problem, and systematically test fixes.

Without consistent reproduction, debugging becomes a frustrating guessing game.

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