Logcat Lens
A powerful Android Logcat viewer for VS Code — stream, filter, and search device logs without leaving your editor.
Features
- Real-time streaming — Stream logs from any connected device or emulator
- Instant filtering — Toggle log levels, add tag/package filters with autocomplete
- Search — Full-text search with match counter, navigation, and filter mode
- Display modes — Standard, compact, and soft wrap with infinite scroll-back
- High performance — Smooth scrolling even with massive log volumes
- Export & copy — Double-click to copy, export filtered logs to editor
- App lifecycle tracking — Real-time app state (Foreground, Background, Killed, Crashed, ANR) with action buttons
- Tag groups — Save and load named groups of tags for quick switching
- Device monitoring — Auto-detect device connect/disconnect with online/offline status
- Detail pane — Click any log row to open a resizable side pane with full message, multi-line JSON auto-stitched and pretty-printed across chunked log entries
- Inline media previews — Image / audio / video responses logged as base64 are detected automatically (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, MP3, WAV, OGG, MP4, PDF…) and rendered inline in the log row; click for full-size preview in the detail pane
- Clickable URLs — HTTP/HTTPS links in messages open in your system browser
Any log line whose embedded base64 starts with a known media magic header is rendered as the actual image (or <audio> / <video>) right in the log row — no need to copy bytes out, decode them, and open them in another tool. Click the preview to expand it in the detail pane.
The viewer is fully app-agnostic — there is no special tag, prefix, or marker required. From your app, anywhere you can write:
Log.d("HTTP", Base64.encode(imageBytes).decodeToString())
…Logcat Lens will recognise the bytes by their magic header and show the preview.
Limitations (these are device-side, not viewer-side):
- Android's
Log.d truncates a single record at ~4 KB. For media bodies larger than that, the app must split the base64 into ~3.5 KB chunks before logging — Logcat Lens reassembles the chunks automatically. A single oversized Log.d call loses its tail on the device.
- Under heavy concurrent volume (e.g. an asset gallery downloading 100+ images at once) Android's logd can drop records from its ring buffer. Gaps in the base64 will produce a broken-image render.
- HTTP logging interceptors that read the body as a UTF-8 string (
readUtf8() / bodyAsString()) corrupt binary bytes before they reach Log.d — no viewer can recover that. For media, capture the raw bytes via peekBody/an OkHttp interceptor and log them as base64.
- For serious HTTP body inspection, pair Logcat Lens with an in-app inspector like Chucker or Axer. Logcat Lens is best for seeing media inline with the rest of your logs, not as a replacement for a dedicated HTTP inspector.
Requirements
- ADB (Android Debug Bridge) — the extension will auto-detect it from common locations, or you can install it directly from within VS Code. Android Studio is not required.
- A connected Android device or emulator
ADB Not Found?
If ADB is not installed, Logcat Lens will prompt you to install it with a single click — no Android Studio needed.
You can also set a custom ADB path in Settings > Logcat Lens > Adb Path.
Usage
- Open the Logcat Lens tab in the bottom panel
- Select a device and click play to start streaming
- Filter by level, tag, or package using the filter bar
- Use sidebar buttons to pause, clear, wrap, or export
- Select a single package to enable lifecycle tracking and app actions
- Save frequently-used tag sets as groups for quick recall
Contributing
Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue.
Want to contribute? Submit a pull request — all contributions are welcome!
