Android and Logcat

OpenIDEA’s Android support is the Logcat tool window: it streams the log of a connected device or emulator through adb, with level and text filters. It does not build, install or run Android apps, manage emulators or edit Android resources.

Set up adb

Logcat drives the adb command from the Android SDK platform-tools. OpenIDEA does not bundle it. It looks for adb in this order:

The OPENIDEA_ADB environment variable (full path to the executable).
platform-tools/ under ANDROID_HOME or ANDROID_SDK_ROOT.
The usual SDK locations: ~/Library/Android/sdk (macOS), ~/Android/Sdk (Linux), %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk (Windows).
adb on PATH, then a few common install paths such as /opt/homebrew/bin/adb or C:\platform-tools\adb.exe.

On macOS, an app started from the Dock does not see variables exported in your shell profile. If you rely on ANDROID_HOME, install the SDK in the default location or start OpenIDEA from a terminal.

Open Logcat

Logcat is not shown on the tool window bar until you first open it. Open it from More Tool Windows (the … button on the tool window bar), from View › Tool Windows › Logcat, or with Find Action (⌘⇧A / Ctrl+Shift+A). It works without a project open. Connect a device over USB or start an emulator. The device list shows each device as model (serial); devices that are offline or unauthorized are listed but cannot be selected. Click Refresh devices after connecting a new one. When you pick a device, Logcat shows the last 200 lines of its buffer and then follows new output. Switching to another device starts with an empty view.

Control	What it does
Device	The device to watch.
Minimum level	Show lines at this level or above: Verbose, Debug, Info, Warnings, Errors, Fatal. Lines that don’t follow the logcat format are always shown.
Filter box	A filter expression (see below).
Filter history	Recent filters. Clear History empties the list.
Pause / Resume	Stop updating the view. Lines that arrive while paused are added when you resume.
Scroll to end	Follow the newest line. Scrolling up stops following; click the button to follow again.
Clear	Empty the view. The device’s own log buffer is not cleared.
Refresh devices	Ask `adb` for the device list again.

The status line shows whether the stream is running, Paused while paused, the number of lines (shown / total when filtered), and an error if the filter is invalid.

Filter expressions

The filter box takes expressions in the same shape as Android Studio’s Logcat:

Expression	Matches
`tag:glide`	Tag contains `glide`
`message:boom` (or `msg:`)	Message contains `boom`
`pid:4242`	Process or thread id is 4242
`level:error`, `level:warn,error`, `level:e`	Level is one of those (names or letters)
`-tag:chatty`	Excludes matching lines (`!` works too)
`a b`	Both (`&` works too)
`a\|b`	Either
`(a\|b) -c`	Grouping
`message~:^Tile.*`	Case-insensitive regular expression
`message:"two words"`	Quoted value
`glide`	A bare word matches the tag, the message, or `#pid`

Text matching is case-insensitive. Press Enter to save the filter to the history, and ↑ / ↓ in the filter box to step through earlier filters. The history keeps the last 20 filters.

Limits

The view keeps the most recent 20,000 lines.
One device at a time.
No package or process picker, no saved filter presets and no export of the log.

Get started

Editing

Run and debug

Tools

AI

Remote development

Customize

Reference

Android and Logcat

Set up adb

Open Logcat

Filter expressions

Limits

​Set up adb

​Open Logcat

​Toolbar

​Filter expressions

​Limits

Set up adb

Open Logcat

Toolbar

Filter expressions

Limits