Debugging on an Android device

Unity supports the following ways to debug an application on an Android device:

• USB debugging.
• Both wired and wireless connection through Android Debug Bridge.

USB debugging

Unity supports USB debugging for Android devices. To use USB debugging, enable developer options on your device. To do this, refer to Android’s Configure developer options documentation.

Use a USB cable to connect the device to your computer. If you are developing on a Windows computer, you might need to install a device-specific USB driver. Refer to the manufacturer’s website for your device for additional information.

The setup process differs for Windows and macOS. For more information on connecting your Android device to the SDK, refer to the Run Your App section of the Android Developer documentation.

Note: Unity doesn’t support USB debugging for ChromeOS devices. Instead, use Android Debug Bridge over wireless connection.

Android Debug Bridge

Unity supports Android Debug Bridge (ADB) over USB for Android devices and over wireless connection for Android and ChromeOS devices. Wireless connection is useful when you can’t perform USB debugging, such as when using a ChromeOS device, when a controller is plugged into the Android device, or when debugging VR applications and you insert the Android device into the VR Kit. For information on how to connect a ChromeOS device to Unity through ADB, refer to Debugging on a ChromeOS device.

Connect via USB

To connect an Android device to Unity through ADB using a USB:

1. Enable ADB on the device. For information on how to do this, refer to Set up a device for development.
2. Use a USB cable to connect your Android device to the machine running Unity.
3. In Unity, open Android Build settings.
4. In the Build settings window, select the Run Device drop-down and select your device from the options. If your device doesn’t appear, click Refresh.

Connect wirelessly

To wirelessly connect an Android device to Unity through ADB:

1. Enable ADB on the device. For information on how to do this, refer to Set up a device for development.
2. Find the IP address of your device. The process to do this depends on your device manufacturer.
3. In Unity, open Android Build settings.
4. In the Build settings window, select the Run Device drop-down and then select the <Enter IP> option.
5. In the window that opens, enter the IP address and port number of the device and select Add. If the device’s port number is 5555, you don’t need to enter it. After Unity successfully connects to the device, it selects the device as the Run Device.

View Android logs

When you run a build of your application on an Android device, Android collects messages such as stack traces and logs from scripts. To see these messages, Android provides the logcat command-line tool. To use this tool with your Unity application, either:

• Launch ADB with the logcat parameter:
  $ adb logcat
• Use the Android Logcat package which implements the logcat command-line tool and displays messages from the application in a dedicated window in Unity.

For more information, refer to Android Logcat.