DDMS is a must have tool to view the emulator/device activities. To access DDMS in the Eclipse, navigate to Windows | Open Perspective | Other and then choose DDMS. By default it is available in the Android SDK (it's inside the folder android-sdk/tools
by the file ddms
). From this perspective the following aspects are available:
- Devices: The list of the devices and AVDs that are connected to ADB
- Emulator Control: It helps to carry out device functions
- LogCat: It views real time system log messages
- Threads: It gives an idea of currently running threads within a VM
- Heap: It shows heap usage by application
- Allocation Tracker: It provides information on memory allocation of objects
- File Explorer: It explores the device file system
The following image shows important aspects of DDMS: