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Mobile DevTools

Device Lab

The Device Lab connects to a booted device or simulator and lets you check the real app: install & launch, capture screenshots and video, stream crash-highlighted logs, and run an automated smoke.

It’s all local shell-outs — Mobile QA talks straight to your adb, xcrun simctl, and flutter. There’s no agent daemon and no pairing. Full support is on Android devices and iOS simulators; physical iOS is install/launch only.

Connecting a device

Section titled “Connecting a device”

Mobile QA discovers targets by merging three local sources:

  • flutter devices --machine — the master list of known targets.
  • adb devices — which Android serials are actually connected and authorized.
  • xcrun simctl list devices booted — which iOS simulators are booted.

A target only shows as booted if it’s live in adb/simctl, so the list reflects reality.

Android

Section titled “Android”
  1. Boot an emulator or connect a device with USB debugging enabled.
  2. Confirm adb devices lists it as device (not unauthorized).
  3. In the Device Lab, click Refresh and pick it from the Device dropdown.

If your adb isn’t on the default PATH, set the ADB_BIN environment variable to its location.

iOS simulator

Section titled “iOS simulator”
  1. Boot a simulator (from Xcode, or xcrun simctl boot <udid>).
  2. Confirm it appears in xcrun simctl list devices booted.
  3. Click Refresh and select it.

Listing and selecting a device

Section titled “Listing and selecting a device”

On the Device Lab screen, choose your project in the App dropdown and your target in the Device dropdown. Not-yet-booted targets are marked (not booted). App info reads the installed app’s id, version, and (on a simulator) its on-disk size.

Install and launch

Section titled “Install and launch”

Install & Launch builds a debug build, installs it, launches it, and captures a launch screenshot — streaming the whole build log as it goes:

  • Android: flutter build apk --debug → adb install -r → launch via the LAUNCHER intent.
  • iOS simulator: flutter build ios --simulator --debug → simctl install → simctl launch.

The first build can take a few minutes. Navigating away or clicking Stop kills the whole build tree.

Capturing screenshots, video, and logs

Section titled “Capturing screenshots, video, and logs”
  • Screenshot — saves a PNG. Android uses adb exec-out screencap; the iOS simulator uses simctl io … screenshot.
  • Record — starts a screen recording (button becomes ■ Stop rec); click again to stop and save the MP4. Android records with screenrecord (180s limit) then pulls the file; the iOS simulator uses simctl io … recordVideo.
  • Live logs — streams the device console. Android tails logcat; the iOS simulator streams the syslog for the Runner process. Lines that look like crashes (FATAL, EXCEPTION, ANR, SIGSEGV, …) are highlighted in red. Click AI triage to have AI summarize the console for crashes.
  • Smoke — an automated exploration. On Android it runs monkey with the number of events in the field next to the button (default 200, 20–5000) and reports whether it hit a crash or ANR. On an iOS simulator it runs your integration_test/ instead (monkey is Android-only). No integration_test/? Generate one with AI QA → Smoke test.

Click Stop to end any streaming operation and kill its process tree.

Where artifacts are stored

Section titled “Where artifacts are stored”

Screenshots and recordings are saved under your local data dir, keyed by app:

~/.mobile-devtools/mobile-qa/artifacts/<app>/

Files are timestamped — shot-<date>.png, rec-<date>.mp4. They appear in the Captured artifacts gallery on the Device Lab screen, where you can:

  • Open any image or video in a lightbox, or Download it.
  • Select all / Clear, then Share the selection to your team or Remove it.