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To narrow Android logs while developing a Kotlin app, use Android Studio Logcat’s key-value query syntax to filter by package, tag, message, or severity. For terminal output, use adb logcat tag-priority specifications instead; the two interfaces use different grammars.

Open Logcat and choose a filter

  1. Build and run your app on an Android emulator or physical device.
  2. In Android Studio, open View > Tool Windows > Logcat.
  3. Enter a query in the main query field. Logcat shows app and system messages as they arrive, and can display an exception with its stack trace.

Android Studio’s query field accepts structured terms such as package, process, tag, message, level, and age. Press Ctrl+Space in the field for query suggestions. You can also reuse saved query history or favorite filters.

Filter by app, tag, message, or event

Try these queries in Android Studio Logcat:

Query What it shows
package:mine Logs from packages belonging to the open project.
tag:MyTag level:DEBUG Entries for the specified tag at DEBUG or greater severity.
message~:timeout Messages matching timeout as a regular expression.
-tag:Noise Entries whose tag does not match the supplied text.
(tag:foo | level:ERROR) & package:mine Project-package entries that match either the tag condition or the error-level condition.
is:crash or is:stacktrace Crash-like entries or stack-trace entries.

When you omit explicit operators, positive terms with the same key are combined with OR, while other terms are combined with AND. Parentheses and explicit | and & operators let you make the logic clear. Negation and regular-expression matching are documented for tag, package, message, and line. See Android Developers’ Logcat query documentation for the supported syntax.

Set a severity threshold in Android Studio

Use level: followed by a named level: VERBOSE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, or ASSERT. Levels are case-insensitive. The query is a minimum threshold, not an exact-match selector: level:INFO includes INFO and more severe entries, while level:WARN includes WARN, ERROR, and ASSERT.

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  • level:WARN — warnings and more severe entries.
  • level:ERROR — errors and ASSERT entries.

As Android Developers explains, “The level query matches against the log level of the Logcat message, where the log entry level is greater or equal to the query level.”

Filter terminal output with adb

Unlike Android Studio’s named key-value queries, adb logcat uses whitespace-separated tag and minimum-priority pairs. The general command form is adb logcat [<option>] ... [<filter-spec>] ...; you can also run the device-side form, adb shell logcat ....

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To show the MyApp tag at DEBUG or higher and silence other tags, run:

adb logcat MyApp:D '*:S'

The *:S specification makes the selected tag filters an allowlist. Quote it in shells where the asterisk would otherwise be expanded as a wildcard. To show warnings and more severe messages from all tags, use:

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adb logcat *:W
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For command options available on the connected device, check adb logcat --help. Android documents the command syntax and priorities in its Logcat command-line guide.

Write diagnostic logs in Kotlin

For app diagnostics, Kotlin code can use android.util.Log. Android’s debugging guide shows using the Log class to write messages and passing an exception as a throwable when you need its stack trace:

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import android.util.Log

private const val TAG = "MyApp"

fun reportFailure(error: Throwable) {
    Log.e(TAG, "Request failed", error)
}

Use an appropriate log level for the message, then filter by the tag or severity in Logcat. Android’s debugging guide advises removing debug log messages and stack-trace print calls before publishing; a DEBUG flag with conditional logging is one way to keep development diagnostics out of release behavior.

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If expected output is missing

Logcat output can be narrowed at more than one stage, so a display query may not be the only reason a message is absent. Android’s command-line documentation identifies compile-time settings that remove calls, system properties that set a minimum severity, application filtering, and display filters as possible filtering layers. Android log data is kept in circular buffers, including main (most application logs), system, and crash. If a message is not visible, review your query and applicable filtering layers, then consult adb logcat --help for options supported by the connected device.

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