How to test the performance of an Android application?

by

If you want to profile your application to find performance bottlenecks you can use the traceview tool. This gives you a graphical view of performance traces of your application.

To create a trace add the following to your code where you want to start tracing:

Debug.startMethodTracing("myapp");

and then put the following when you want to stop tracing:

Debug.stopMethodTracing();

This will create a trace file call myapp.trace in the root directory of the SD Card. As it is written to the SD Card:

  • If you’re using the emulator you’ll need to add an SD card to your AVD.

  • You’ll need to give you app permission to write the SD card by adding the following to your Manifest:

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

Once the file has been created you’ll need to copy it to your PC. You can do this using the adb command:

adb pull /sdcard/myapp.trace c:/my/dir/myapp.trace

Finally, start traceview giving it the full path to the trace file:

traceview c:/my/dir/myapp.trace

I did have some problems with traceview failing with OutOfMemory exceptions. I fixed this on Windows by changing the last line of traceview.bat from:

call java -Djava.ext.dirs=%javaextdirs% -Dcom.android.traceview.toolsdir= -jar %jarpath% %*

to:

call java -Xmx1g -Djava.ext.dirs=%javaextdirs% -Dcom.android.traceview.toolsdir= -jar %jarpath% %*

Adding the -Xmx1g option allows traceview to use more memory.

More Related Contents:

  1. Making the Android emulator run faster
  2. Can anyone solve my Android Fragment issue? [closed]
  3. Why is the Android emulator so slow? How can we speed up the Android emulator? [closed]
  4. How to emulate GPS location in the Android Emulator?
  5. Why are nested weights bad for performance? Alternatives?
  6. Android webview slow
  7. Timertask or Handler
  8. Android ListView Refresh Single Row
  9. Android onClick in XML vs. OnClickListener
  10. why getSpeed() always return 0 on android
  11. Android custom view group delegate addView
  12. Most memory efficient way to resize bitmaps on android?
  13. Android xml vs java layouts performance
  14. Glide image loading with application context
  15. Limitation on texture size? Android Open GL ES 2.0
  16. Android test code coverage with JaCoCo Gradle plugin
  17. Stopping an Android app from console
  18. Thread.sleep( ) with Espresso
  19. How to generate zoom/pinch gesture for testing for Android
  20. Android Studio Espresso Testing Error: Empty Test Suite
  21. Difference between Android Instrumentation test and Unit test in Android Studio?
  22. Enhance webView performance (should be the same performance as native Web Browser)
  23. How do I layout nested RecyclerViews, while remaining performant?
  24. Why ITelephony.aidl works?
  25. PhoneGap 1.4 wrapping Sencha Touch 2.X – What about performance?
  26. Get signal strength of WIFI and Mobile Data
  27. com.android.builder.testing.ConnectedDevice > hasTests[test(AVD) – 5.0] FAILED
  28. Android: Simulate WiFi in the emulator?
  29. Android: RunOnUiThread vs AsyncTask
  30. Android Listview slow down scroll speed

Leave a Comment