Running Devices

Your phone, live inside VS Code.
Mirror and control Android and iPhone, hot reload Flutter, record, and debug, without leaving your editor.

Highlights

Nothing to install on the phone, no root, no account.

Get started

Android

1. Turn on USB debugging (Settings → About phone → tap Build number 7 times → Developer options → USB debugging).
2. Connect the phone with a cable and accept the Allow USB debugging? prompt.
3. Click the Running Devices icon in the activity bar. With one device connected, mirroring starts on its own.

iPhone and iPad (macOS)

1. Connect with a USB cable, unlock the phone, and tap Trust if asked.
2. Pick it from the device list and press ▶. The first time, macOS asks to allow Camera access for VS Code; that's how macOS labels iPhone screen capture (QuickTime uses the same permission).

Flutter, built in

When a Flutter app started from VS Code runs on the mirrored device, a Flutter bar appears above the screen:

• Hot reload and hot restart with live status: Hot reloading… → Reloaded in 312 ms. Reloads on save show up too.
• Restart and Stop the app.
• Inspect widget: turn it on, tap any widget on the mirrored screen, and VS Code jumps to its code.
• DevTools, plus debug painting, performance overlay, slow animations and repaint rainbow under ⋯.

Not running yet? The bar offers Run on this device, using your launch.json configuration when you have one.

Works on Android and iPhone. Requires the Flutter extension.

iPhone and iPad

• Live mirroring over USB, at the device's native sharpness.
• Touch control (optional): choose ⋯ → Enable touch control once. Running Devices builds WebDriverAgent with your Apple Development signing and installs it on the iPhone; from then on you can tap, swipe and type from VS Code, and it starts by itself whenever you mirror. Needs Xcode and Developer Mode on the iPhone. Taps land about half a second after the click.
• Device log (⋯ → Device log: app…): the iPhone's live log for your app. It keeps running while the app is killed, so you can follow a cold start from a notification or a link. Each relaunch is marked.
• Crash & kill reports (⋯ → Crash & kill reports…): crashes, CPU-limit kills and memory kills for your app, each with a readable summary and the crashing stack.
• Screenshots, screen recording and the Flutter bar work just like on Android.

Android toolkit

Everything is one click away in the ⋯ menu (and in the Command Palette under Running Devices):

• Logcat for the app in the foreground, in a colored terminal. It follows the app across restarts, so killed-state launches are logged from the first line.
• Install APKs by dropping them on the screen or right-clicking them in the Explorer. Drop any other file to copy it to the phone's Downloads.
• Apps: launch any app, open a deep link (myapp://…) to test it, or restart, force stop, clear data and uninstall the current app.
• Quick settings: dark theme, font size, display size, layout bounds, show taps and animation speed, without touching the phone.
• Wi-Fi: pair with a QR code (Android 11+), or switch a cabled phone to Wi-Fi and unplug it.
• Performance stats: live fps, bitrate and resolution over the screen.

Put it anywhere

• Pop Out to Window gives the device its own floating window, perfect for a second monitor.
• Open in Editor Tab puts it in a tab you can split next to your code.
• Move View… places the panel in the Secondary Side Bar, the bottom Panel, or back.

The screen always gets the most room: the controls sit beside or below the phone only when there's space to spare, and otherwise tuck behind a handle at the bottom edge. Switching places never reconnects to the device.

Mouse and keyboard

The control bar has Back, Home, Overview, Volume, Power (hold for the power menu), Rotate and Notifications. On iPhone they map to the matching gestures.

Requirements

• Android: Android 5.0 or newer and adb (Android SDK Platform-Tools). It's found automatically in the SDK's default location or on your PATH; otherwise set runningDevices.adbPath.
• iPhone/iPad: macOS 14 or newer and a USB cable. Xcode is needed for touch control, device logs and crash reports.

Settings

Troubleshooting

• No devices found: run adb devices in a terminal. If the phone shows as unauthorized, unlock it and accept the USB debugging prompt.
• Black or frozen screen: try runningDevices.maxSize = 1024.
• Quick settings say the phone blocks changes: Xiaomi, OPPO, Realme and OnePlus phones need one more switch in Developer options: Disable permission monitoring (OPPO, Realme, OnePlus) or USB debugging (Security settings) (Xiaomi).
• Wi-Fi pairing doesn't find the phone: the phone and computer must be on the same network; some office and guest networks block discovery. Use Pair with pairing code or Switch USB device to Wi-Fi instead.
• iPhone stays on "Waiting for video": use a cable, unlock the iPhone, and allow Camera access for Visual Studio Code in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera.
• iPhone touch control won't start: unlock the iPhone, and trust your developer app once in Settings → General → VPN & Device Management.
• Anything else: View → Output → Running Devices shows the connection log.

Privacy

Everything runs on your machine, over your cable or local network. Running Devices has no telemetry and sends nothing anywhere.

Credits

Android screen capture uses scrcpy by Genymobile and Romain Vimont (Apache 2.0). iPhone touch control uses WebDriverAgent from the Appium project (BSD).