Android logcat "application" column is always empty

Question

Android logcat "application" column is always empty. I have latest version of android tools.

Garretson

even after restarting your eclipse? – Are

im using intellij. this is ddms window. application column is always empty. restart doesn't help. – Garretson

oh, i've never been used intellij, but i had this issue a few times on eclipse and restarting eclipse / restarting ddms or debug did the trick most of the time – Are

im using monitor which is separate tool, not related to intellij. this screenshot is monitor app (android-sdk/tools/monitor) – Garretson

sometimes just clearing logCat buffer works, sometimes ADB or even Eclipse needs to be restarted... – Parrotfish

Did you get the solution atlast?? – Mythology

Answer 1

I tried all the other suggestions here and none of them worked. For me, the application is shown when running on the emulator, but not on my Galaxy Nexus.

It turns out I needed to add android:debuggable="true" to <application> in my AndroiManifest.xml. See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/application-element.html. People who use Eclipse don't see this problem because apparently Eclipse enables debugging automatically according to http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html.

Apparently apps need to be marked as debuggable to debug them on production ROMs, but they can be debugged anyway on debug ROMs, which is why it works on the emulator but not on the physical device. Another option is probably to build a debug ROM and install it on your device.

You'd think logcat should be able to figure out the application based on the PID rather than needing to have the app built for debugging.

Ency

Didn't work for me. Also tried: Rebooting phone, restarting adb, restarting eclipse, clearing the log..... nothing – Hass

I have tried with 3 different devices of differents brands. Restarted Eclipse. Tried standlone ddms.bat and monitor.bat. Nothing worked. Emulators work fine but all devices have their Application column empty. – Chadwick

Its only required on unrooted phone otherwise we don't need because it doesn't work on rooted phone. it happens to me – Homeric

It's best to leave out the android:debuggable attribute from the manifest. If you do, then the tools will automatically insert android:debuggable=true when building an APK to debug on an emulator or device. And when you perform a release build, such as Exporting APK, it will automatically set it to false. If on the other hand you specify a specific value in the manifest file, then the tools will always use it. This can lead to accidentally publishing your app with debug information. – Footfall

@StevieG Yes, it is better if your build system sets it properly automatically, but if you end up at this question, something has obviously gone wrong. IIRC the play store will prevent you from publishing a debuggable APK. – Ency

Answer 2

Another idea:

adb kill-server
adb start-server

Worked for me.

Neidaneidhardt

Answer 3

you should enable ADB integration through Tools -> Android, before run your app. Then the log cat will work correctly.

Tools->Android->Enable ADB Integration active

Bindweed

What is this screen, Android Studio? What to do if somebody doesn't have AS? – Luxate

@PaxBeach Yes this is android studio.. If doesn`t have just install it :).. because this is the official IDE.. Google may be restrict other IDE in future. so jump to AS – Bindweed

Answer 4

I ran into this problem today. What worked for me was to connect to the emulator (if you have an Intel CPU with virtualization capabilities, run the Intel emulator image with virtualization--it is much faster), launch the app on the emulator and see if the application field comes back to logcat by logging with your app.

For me when connected to the emulator started showing the Application column after trying a few log actions that wrote to the log. After that I connected back to my actual device (Nexus 7), launched the app again from Eclipse, and set DDMS back to the application running on the Nexus 7, and the Application column magically appeared again.

Prior to this I tried various devices (Nexus 4) and restarting Eclipse/adb but nothing worked until I connected to the emulator.

Janeenjanek

Answer 5

I've tried to fix this strange bug but nothing works. Sometimes application name is blank in logcat and sometimes it's there. I can't even reproduce it. This is not an answer but my quickfix.

Browse through entire logcat and somehow identify the PID of your application and just filter for that in logcat search like this

pid: 10036

or whatever your app PID is.

Galleass

Answer 6

I encountered this problem after going the route of "Help=>check for updates" to upgrade my eclipse ADT bundle to latest version of ADT plugin. Now there's a couple hours of my life that I'll never get back.....

Unfortunately, nothing I tried would be able to bring back the app name in the application column. In fact, I even got the ADB device offline problem at one point. The first sign that something was wrong was that my android device would show up in the DDMS perspective, but no package name was listed.

I ended up re-installing my ADT bundle (into a new folder), unplugging my device, rebooting, and starting everything up again and using the new ADT bundle.

Dairen

Answer 7

On my particular case (I'm using Netbeans plus standalone Android Debug Monitor) the "application" column comes back after I:

1. "Force stop" the app from the device
2. Run it again from Netbeans > "Run Project"

Vertebrate