# [howto] post a helpful logcat directly from your phone (for noobs like me)



## mcmillanje (Jun 6, 2011)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

One of the most helpful things you can do when posting a question / issue / bug is to post a logcat of the issue happening. Until recently, I had not been following this standard procedure because I was under the notion that providing a logcat was hard / you had to connect it to adb / whatever...

Turns out, It's actually ridiculously easy.

*First run:* you only need to do this once :grin:

*Step one:* verify you can replicate the issue and exactly how. (This will make it easier to narrow down the log to the specific incident...).

*Step two:* Download the following FREE applications:
aLogcat
(will show / record your phone's output and share it)

Pastebin for Android (a handy place to put it so you don't have to post 200 lines of code)

*Step three:* Open aLogcat, hit menu > preferences and set your desired Level. I like to set it to either "debug" or "information. This screens out info that probably has nothing to do with your problem, like every time the dalvic cache updates...
NOTE: I am not a dev, I do not know for sure how much info is needed, this just seems to show most everything without the clutter... please advise if wrong.









*Getting your log*

*Step one:* (optional) Restart your phone and open aLogcat to begin collecting data
(this will restart your logcat so you don't have hours of random stuff to sort through to find your problem) NOTE: If there's an easier way... well please let me know :wink2:

*Step two:* Replicate your problem!
(self explanatory)

*Step three:* Open aLogCat, hit Menu > Share > Paste to Pastebin









*Step four:* Once you're in the Pastebin app, hit menu > Paste

A box will pop up with a link to your pasted text, press / hold the link and copy.









There you go! Now you can paste this into your favorite forum (*ahem rootzwiki.com), IRC, or whatever...

Hope this helps!


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## mcmillanje (Jun 6, 2011)

Just parking here


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## JBirdVegas (Jun 11, 2011)

Good stuff I've never pulled logcat via anything but adb


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## JSM9872 (Jun 27, 2011)

Dfinitely handy to know how to do this. Thanks for sharing!!


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## SyNiK4L (Jun 7, 2011)

wow. really like this. will deff help out.


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## PatHoge (Jun 7, 2011)

Man, this would've saved me so much time a few months ago haha. Good writeup!

Sent from my DROIDX using RootzWiki Forums


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## Zach (Jun 25, 2011)

Thanks so much this will help out a lot!


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## mcmillanje (Jun 6, 2011)

Thanks guys! Really appreciate the comments.


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## mcmillanje (Jun 6, 2011)

Does anyone know if you can restart the logcat without restarting the phone? Also: devs, what verbosity should users use?


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## Zach (Jun 25, 2011)

"mcmillanje said:


> Does anyone know if you can restart the logcat without restarting the phone? Also: devs, what verbosity should users use?


Also would like to know!


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## mcmillanje (Jun 6, 2011)

Update: hitting menu>clear will restart your logcat. No word on verbosity. So I would pit it at debug or information.


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