Can't start Android Studio Layout Inspector: "Unexpected error: empty view hierarchy"

Question

Can't seem to launch Layout Inspector on Android Studio 3.0 (Canary 3)

When connected to my device and app running, choosing Tools > Android > Layout Inspector comes up with the following error dialog:

"Error obtaining view hierarchy: Unexpected error: empty view hierarchy"

Any setup I'm missing? I have Developer Options enabled on the device.

Answer 1

In general I've this behavior when something is "moving" in the view so the layout inspector cannot retrieve a simple layout, that's why pausing a video will work but if you have something more complex like camera preview or Google Map is harder, not sure how to work around this

Answer 2

If you have ViewTreeObserver in your code to measure a view's width/height, and you're changing some width/height/padding/etc. according to a result you are getting from addOnPreDrawListener of ViewTreeObserver;

Just comment inside onPreDraw or comment all code related to ViewTreeObserver.

Answer 3

I can't launch my hierarchy viewer while playing video. Once I pause the video, it works!

Answer 4

This could be related to your Android version. For example, in my case, this error occurs on Genymotion on Android 4. After moving to Android 5 this error gone.