Disable LogCat Output COMPLETELY in release Android app?

Question

Shutting off my own app's LogCat output before releasing an app to the market is straightforward. I also know how to selectively filter LogCat message by tag and/or id for my own debug convenience.

But now I am interested in something that may be much more difficult (perhaps impossible?): Disable all LogCat output, including & especially those coming from 3rd-party services like TtsService, GoogleLoginService, etc.

Is this possible?

To further clarify: I am not interested in filtering out messages for myself. I am rather interested in disabling 3rd-party messages for whoever downloads my app from the Android Market. Is this possible?

Answer 1

You can use ProGuard to remove completely any lines where a return value is not used, by telling ProGuard to assume that there will be no problems.

The following proguard.cfg chunk instructs to remove Log.d, Log.v and Log.i calls.

-assumenosideeffects class android.util.Log {     public static *** d(...);     public static *** w(...);     public static *** v(...);     public static *** i(...); } 

The end result is that these log lines are not in your release apk, and therefore any user with logcat won't see d/v/i logs.

Answer 2

if you don't use proguard, you have to manage the log yourself and in the manifest file make dubuggable false

<application
    android:name="MyApplication"
    android:icon="@drawable/gift"
    android:label="@string/app_name" android:debuggable="@bool/build_log">

Here my custom log class

public class Lol {

    public static final boolean ENABLE_LOG = true & MyApplication.sDebug;

    private static final boolean DEBUG = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    private static final boolean VERBOSE = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    private static final boolean TEMP = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    private static final boolean WARNING = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    private static final boolean INFO = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    private static final boolean ERROR = true & ENABLE_LOG;

    public static void obvious(String tag, String msg) {
        if (DEBUG) {
            msg = "*********************************\n" + msg
                    + "\n*********************************";
            Log.d(tag, msg);
        }
    }

    public static void d(String tag, String msg) {
        if (DEBUG)
            Log.d(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void d(boolean bool, String tag, String msg) {
        if (TEMP&bool)
            Log.d(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void i(String tag, String msg) {
        if (INFO)
            Log.i(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void e(String tag, String msg) {
        if (ERROR)
            Log.e(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void e(boolean bool, String tag, String msg) {
        if (TEMP&bool)
            Log.e(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void v(String tag, String msg) {
        if (VERBOSE)
            Log.v(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void w(String tag, String msg) {
        if (WARNING)
            Log.w(tag, msg);
    }

    public static String getStackTraceString(Exception e) {
        return Log.getStackTraceString(e);
    }

    public static void w(String tag, String msg, Exception e) {
        if (WARNING)
            Log.w(tag, msg,e);
    }
}

Answer 3

The great answer provided by David Caunt doesn't seem to work for the rules defined in proguard-android-optimize.txt.

Instead of using the wildcard ***, current versions of ProGuard seem to expect the return parameter's type qualifier:

-assumenosideeffects class android.util.Log {
    public static int   d(...);
    public static int   w(...);
    public static int   v(...);
    public static int   i(...);
    public static int wtf(...);
}