Best Debugging Tools in Android (Updated for 2025)

Android debugging involves tools and techniques for troubleshooting issues like crashes, slow performance, UI glitches, and network errors that might occur in Android applications. According to recent statistics, Android dominates the global smartphone OS market with a share of over 70% worldwide, especially due to its open source nature and large developer community.

Common Issues while Debugging in Android

Some of the most common issues that you might face when debugging Android applications are:

• Managing memory leaks: Unexpected app slowdowns or crashes might be experienced, if you don’t manage memory leaks due to improper handling of activities, fragments, and services.
• Ensuring UI consistency: Since customers use the application with varying screen sizes and layouts, ensuring that the UI experience remains consistent might be difficult.
• Testing for compatibility across versions: Ensuring compatibility between Android versions and the device models also impacts how you debug issues.
• Handling network errors: Any issues to an API being inaccessible or delayed response from a service needs to be troubleshooted to handle any network-related reasons, especially in apps relying on external data.
• Optimizing for performance: Use of inefficient code, excessive resource usage, or slow database queries can lead to performance issues, especially on low-end devices.
• Detecting security vulnerabilities: Since we are dealing with sensitive data, any improper handling of data, weak encryption, or outdated libraries can expose the app to security risks.

Investing for debugging tools in Android that automate issue troubleshooting in your development cycle to achieve scalability and coverage makes practical sense.

Top 11 Debugging Tools in Android for 2025

Some of the popular debugging tools in Android for 2025 are as follows:

1. BrowserStack
BrowserStack provides products such as App Automate, App Live, and Bug Capture that you can incorporate into your Android testing strategy to ensure that your debugging process is seamless. Teams can integrate popular automation frameworks such as Appium, Espresso, Calabash, Flutter, and Detox.

Key features:

• Test across 20,000+ real Android device-OS combinations
• Integrate with as Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, Flutter and Detox for automated testing
• Report bugs and capture metadata while testing across single or multiple devices in both automated or manual testing
• Integrate with popular CI/CD and debugging apps such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Slack or Github
• Use app profiles to track metrics such as FPS, ANR rate, App and page loading times, resource usage, and more in real time.
• Using their Bug Capture helps report bugs with detailed, data-rich bug reports with just a single click, enabling faster issue resolution.
• Leverage native device features like GPS, network simulation, localization & more to replicate actual mobile user conditions.

2. Android Studio Profiler
Android Studio Profiler is a comprehensive suite of performance analysis tools. It allows you to visualize and analyze real-time performance metrics for your apps on physical devices or emulators. By identifying areas of inefficiency, you can optimize your apps for better performance and user experience.

Key features:

• Tracks app performance in real time and records CPU usage, thread activity, and method calls.
• Monitors memory allocation, identifying leaks, and tracking how memory usage changes over time.
• Measures data sent and received over the network, showing network requests, payloads, and response times.
• Tracks battery consumption, analyzes factors like GPS usage, Wi-Fi, and CPU cycles.

3. Zipy
Zipy.io is a debugging platform for identifying and resolving front-end and network-related issues. It provides detailed session recordings that include stack traces, console logs, network requests, and user interactions.

Key features:

• Replays user actions to visualize the exact steps leading to bugs without storing PII​
• Instantly notifies developers about errors, reducing debugging time by proactively identifying issues​
• Captures network requests, console, and stack traces, simplifying complex error diagnostics​
• Ensures data privacy while replaying user sessions, crucial for customer trust​
• Connects with tools and frameworks

4. Firebase Crashlytics
Firebase Crashlytics is a real-time crash reporting tool that empowers Android, iOS, and Unity developers to improve app reliability. By capturing detailed error logs and diagnostic data, it enables developers to quickly identify, prioritize, and resolve crashes and bugs, leading to a better user experience.

Key features:

• Provides live crash reports with detailed stack traces, helping developers identify issues as they occur.
• Automatically categorizes crashes by root cause, allowing developers to understand patterns and prioritize fixes efficiently.
• Highlights crashes based on user impact, showing how many users are affected, which helps prioritize bugs.
• Displays the percentage of users experiencing crashes that monitors app stability over time.
• Integrates easily with Android Studio and is preferred if your application uses Firebase.

5. LeakCanary 3.0
LeakCanary 3.0 is a memory leak detection library for Android that helps developers find and fix memory leaks in their apps. In 3.0, integration with WorkManager performs background analysis to prevent memory issues during heap analysis, and AndroidX App Startup implements efficient app initialization.

Key features:

• Integrates WorkManager for background heap analysis, improving memory usage and stability during leak detection​
• Enhances leak detection by leveraging remote jobs in multiple processes, reducing memory overload during analysis​
• Supports AndroidX App Startup for efficient initialization, ensuring faster app startup without unnecessary overhead​
• Allows developers to customize leak detection lifecycle and actions, such as uploading heap analysis results​

6. Stetho by Meta
Stetho is an open-source Android debugging tool developed by Meta. It provides a rich set of features for inspecting network traffic, databases, and shared preferences in real-time. Stetho integrates with Chrome Developer Tools, allowing you to debug their apps via a familiar web interface, making monitoring and troubleshooting Android apps during development​easier.

Key features:

• Allows network requests, responses, and header inspection, similar to Chrome's DevTools.
• Enables easy browsing of SQLite databases and their contents during runtime.
• Displays an app's view hierarchy and allows inspecting elements visually, making UI debugging efficient.
• Integrates seamlessly with existing Android apps with minimal configuration.

7. New Relic
New Relic is a cloud-based observability platform that provides real-time insights into application performance, infrastructure monitoring, and user experiences. By collecting and analyzing data across various systems, it enables teams to identify issues, optimize performance, and improve user satisfaction in their cloud-based applications.

Key features:

• Identifies and logs crashes, providing stack traces and contextual data (like device type, OS version) to help resolve issues faster.
• Detects performance bottlenecks such as slow network requests, UI lags, and CPU overuse, helping developers optimize app responsiveness.
• Helps identify transactions (e.g., button clicks, screen loads) that are taking longer than expected, assisting in debugging performance bottlenecks.
• Tracks database queries and performance, helping diagnose issues like slow database access or inefficient queries affecting app speed.

8. Google’s App Quality Insights
Google's App Quality Insights is a tool that provides developers with actionable data on app performance, stability, and user experience. It highlights issues, trends, and opportunities for improvement, helping to enhance app quality and user satisfaction.

Key features:

• Detects ANR incidents, showing where the app freezes or becomes unresponsive, helping fix UI thread blocking issues.
• Collects user reviews and feedback, identifying common complaints that could indicate underlying issues with app functionality.
• Provides insights into app stability, helping developers address frequent crashes or performance degradation affecting large user segments.
• Identifies crashes and provides detailed reports, including stack traces and device info, for quicker issue resolution.

9. Smartlook
Smartlook is a user behavior analytics and session replay tool that helps you understand how users interact with your apps. It offers features like heatmaps, event tracking, and session recordings to improve user experience and app performance.

Key features:

• Visualizes where users tap, scroll, or focus most, helping detect usability problems and optimize user interaction.
• Tracks user actions like button presses or screen transitions, helping identify bottlenecks or errors in user flows.
• Allows you to watch recorded user sessions to identify UI issues, crashes, or unexpected behavior, making debugging easier.
• Provides insights into crashes and errors, showing what users were doing at the time to help diagnose the root cause.

10. UXCam
UXCam is a mobile app analytics platform that provides session replay, heatmaps, and user journey tracking. It helps developers and designers understand user behavior, identify issues, and optimize app experience for better user engagement and retention.

Key features:

• Helps identify issues specific to certain devices or OS versions, making it easier to resolve platform-related bugs.
• Identifies UX patterns with heatmaps, identifies problematic screens that would benefit from optimizations
• Tracks user flows to identify where users drop off or encounter problems, aiding in pinpointing issues with app navigation.

11. Bugsee
Bugsee is a bug-tracking and session replay tool for mobile apps. It captures detailed crash reports, logs, and video replays of user sessions, helping developers quickly identify and fix issues and enhancing the overall app quality and user experience.

Key features:

• Collects device-specific information (OS version, model, screen size), allowing developers to identify platform-specific issues or inconsistencies.
• Tracks network requests, responses, and errors, helping to debug connectivity or API-related problems.
• Captures logs in real-time, giving developers immediate access to critical information needed to debug performance issues or unexpected behavior.

Checklist for choosing the best Debugging tools in Android

With these compelling options out there in the market, to avoid getting overwhelmed with what tool to choose, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the tool identify all categories of issues such as issues related to performance, crash, networking, or UI/UX?
• Does the tool offer session replay, crash reporting, real-time logging, network tracking, or heatmaps?
• Is it easy to integrate the tool in your existing setups?
• Does the tool provide options to test across a variety of real Android devices ranging from high-end to low-end devices?
• Does the tool provide real-time data for fast feedback during debugging?
• Is the tool affordable or does it offer a free tier?
• Does the tool allow team collaboration and integration with issue tracking tools?
• Does the tool offer good support or if it is an open source tool, does it have a strong community?

Which Android Debugging Tools will I suggest for 2025?

As we are heading towards 2025, some of the key changes that Android devices might experience include, AI-powered apps, 5G connectivity, IoT and wearable apps, and increased App security. If you are on your journey to select an Android debugging tool in 2025, the top 3 tools that standout among the popular choices are as follows:

BrowserStack

1. BrowserStack App Automate, Live, and Bug Capture together provide a complete testing and debugging platform for your testing needs for debugging in Android. It stands out as a top choice due to following differentiators:
2. Access to a real Android device cloud with more than 20000+ devices
3. Instant access to new devices, sometimes on the day of release
4. Real time debugging which means you see how your application behaves as you use it
5. Multitude of feature that are 2025-ready, such as network connection testing, physical SIM testing, biometric authentication, etc
6. Integration with popular software frameworks, CI/CD tools, and bug reporting tools
7. Offers a free tier to try and experience debugging with BrowserStack

Android Studio Profiler

Android Studio Profiler is an integrated tool within Android Studio that provides powerful features like CPU, memory, and network profiling. Some key differentiators are:

1. Real time access to performance related data such as CPU, memory, and network activity
2. Ability to visualize memory leaks and identify services that might be consuming high memory
3. Real-time feedback since it integrates closely with Android Studio, letting you perform debugging sessions with ease

New Relic

New Relic is a cloud-based observability platform designed to provide real-time insights into the performance and behavior of your application. Some key differentiators are:

1. Comprehensive CPU usage, memory consumption, network requests, and database performance analysis
2. Provides real-time crash tracking along with stack traces and error logs
3. Advanced end-to-end monitoring of your app and backend services
4. Provides a free tier to try out the tool