Android Logging Best Practices

You are implementing some small piece of logic, deep inside of your code's activities and a crash occurs, problem is, you have been scrolling LogCat window and you can't find your exception. Here are some best ways to stop wasting time, filtering out the useless:

• Create a TAG with which you will be logging all the time. Saves memory and time. i.e. 

public static final String TAG = "MyApplicationTag";

or

public static final String TAG = MyActivityClass.class.getSimpleName();

...

Then in your code:
...

Log.d(TAG, "log this");

One for an entire application, one per activity. As long as it makes sense to you and you can quickly find it.

Additional tips:

• Setup additional tabs inside of LogCat. These are very useful:
• AndroidRuntime
• System.err
• MediaProvider
• Create a utility class

public static class SuperAppLog {

public final static String TAG = SuperAppLog.class.getSimpleName();

public void error(String message) {

// .. do some app wide logging

// .. redirect to a file

// .. fire off a analytics logging request

// .. etc

}

}

That's it. If you want to get more fancy or mess around with Log levels, check out this answer or this guide.

Happy Coding!