Inspecting performance

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By inspecting performance, you can understand what is happening in an app and ensure it lines up with your expectations.

Android provides several tools you can use to inspect your app's performance. When getting started, we recommend you focus on one area at a time during inspection.

These areas can include:

  • App Startup
  • Slow rendering (jank)
  • Screen transitions and navigation events
  • Long running work
  • Operations in the background such as I/O and networking

Alternatively, you can inspect critical user journeys of your app's workflow. This can help you gain a holistic understanding of where performance and expectations don't align.

There are two main approaches when inspecting performance, manual and automated. It's likely that you will start with manual debugging when inspecting a new area.

Manual inspection

After deciding which area of your app to inspect, you can use a variety of tools to identify what exactly is happening.

For more information, see Overview of system tracing or watch the in depth series on performance debugging.

Automated testing

In addition to manual inspection, you can set up automated tests to collect and aggregate performance data. This helps you understand what users are actually seeing and identify when regressions may occur. For more information on setting up automated performance tests for your app, see Benchmark your app.

Additional resources