Getting started

This guide takes you from a fresh install to reading the logs of your app in a couple of minutes.

1. Install EmuLabZip#

Download the installer for your system from the latest release, or build from source.

2. Have the platform tools ready#

EmuLabZip finds adb on your PATH, in $ANDROID_HOME / $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, or in the default SDK location (~/Library/Android/sdk, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk, ~/Android/Sdk). It starts the ADB server if it is not running. See Android and iOS Simulator for details.

3. Start a device#

# Android
emulator -list-avds
emulator -avd Pixel_9

# iOS
xcrun simctl boot "iPhone 17"
open -a Simulator

Open EmuLabZip. Running devices appear in the device picker in the top-left corner within a few seconds, and the first one that is ready is selected automatically.

4. Look around#

• Overview shows what the device is: OS and build, hardware, display, battery, storage and locale, with a live preview of the screen. Click any value to copy it.
• Logs follows the device log from the moment the device is selected, so history is already there when you open it. See Logs.
• Performance charts CPU, memory, frame rate and battery live. See Performance.
• Memory takes snapshots, compares them and saves heap dumps. See Memory.
• Storage browses the app's files and opens databases, preferences and property lists. See Storage.
• Network captures the device's HTTP and HTTPS traffic. See Network.
• Traces records what the system and an app did and shows where the time went. See Traces.
• Crashes lists crashes, native crashes and ANRs with their stacks, and tells you when a new one happens. See Crashes.
• Controls changes the device's location, appearance, status bar, battery and permissions. See Controls.
• Plugins runs your own collectors. See Plugins. To let an AI assistant use your devices, see the MCP server.
• Screenshot in the toolbar captures the screen and lets you save it as a PNG.

5. Focus on your app#

Pick your app in the app picker next to the device. Then, in Logs, turn on the app filter to see only the lines its process wrote. EmuLabZip keeps track of the process id, so the filter keeps working when the app restarts.

Keyboard shortcuts#

On Windows and Linux use Ctrl instead of ⌘.