📃 PidCat Rust

A colorized Android logcat viewer for Windows with advanced filtering capabilities

🎯 Overview

A fork of PidCat re-written entirely in Rust

PidCat is an enhanced Android logcat viewer originally created by Jake Wharton for the Android Open Source Project. This Windows-optimized fork adds modern features including VT100 color support, advanced tag filtering with substring matching, and improved column formatting.

PidCat filters logcat output by application package name, colorizes the output for better readability, and provides powerful filtering options to help you focus on the logs that matter.

📸 Screenshots

✨ Features

Core Features
- 🎨 Colorized Output - Different colors for log levels, tags, and packages
- 📦 Package Filtering - Show logs only from specific app packages
- 🏷️ Tag Filtering - Filter by log tags with substring matching support
- 🔍 Regex Support - Use regular expressions for advanced tag filtering
- 📊 Process Tracking - Automatically tracks process starts and deaths
- 💻 Windows VT100 Support - Native color support on Windows 10/11
Advanced Filtering
- Multiple Tag Support - Filter by multiple tags simultaneously
- Substring Matching - Match tags containing specific strings (e.g., -t Timeout matches TimeoutJob$update)
- Regex Patterns - Use regex special characters for complex filtering
- Comma-Separated Tags - Specify multiple tags in a single argument: -t Tag1,Tag2,Tag3
- Tag Ignoring - Exclude specific tags from output with -i
- Log Level Filtering - Show only logs at or above a specific level
Display Options
- Customizable Column Widths - Adjust package name and tag column widths
- Smart Tag Display - Automatically shows tags when filtering
- Truncation - Long tags are truncated to fit column width
- Process Notifications - Visual indicators for process lifecycle events
Output Options
- File Output - Save logs to a file with -o
- Color Disable - Remove colors for piping or parsing with -n
- Current App Mode - Automatically filter by the currently running app

📥 Installation

Installer Binaries

From Source

Prerequisites
- Android SDK with ADB in PATH
- Rust latest version
- Git for version control

Installation Steps

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/abdalmoniem/pidcat_rust.git
cd pidcat_rust

# Install cargo-make
cargo install cargo-make

# Build all variants
cargo make build-all

# Run debug variant
cargo run -- com.example.app

# Run release variant
cargo run --release -- com.example.app

🚀 Usage

Basic Usage

# Filter logs by package name
pidcat com.example.myapp

# Filter by multiple packages
pidcat com.example.app1 com.example.app2

# Show all logs (no package filtering)
pidcat -a

# Filter by currently running app
pidcat --current

Advanced Filtering

# Filter by specific tags
pidcat com.example.app -t MyTag -t AnotherTag

# Filter by tags with substring matching
pidcat com.example.app -t Timeout
# Matches: TimeoutJob, TimeoutJob$update, NetworkTimeout, etc.

# Use comma-separated tags
pidcat com.example.app -t MyTag,AnotherTag,ThirdTag

# Combine with log level filtering
pidcat com.example.app -t MyTag -l D
# Shows only Debug level and above

# Ignore specific tags
pidcat com.example.app -i ChattyCrap -i Noisy

# Use regex for complex patterns
pidcat com.example.app -t "^Network.*"
# Matches: NetworkManager, NetworkClient, etc.

Command Line Options

positional arguments:
  package(s)            Application package name(s)
                        This can be specified multiple times

options:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit.
  -v, --version         Print the version number and exit
  -a, --all             Print log messages from all packages, default: False
  -k, --keep            Keep the entire log before running, default: False
  -d, --device          Use first device for log input, default: False
  -e, --emulator        Use first emulator for log input, default: False
  -g, --color-gc        Color garbage collection, default: False
  -N, --no-color        Disable colors, default: False
  -P, --show-pid        Show package name in output, default: False
  -p, --show-package    Show package name in output, default: False
  -S, --always-show-tags
                        Always show the tag name, default: False
  -c, --current         Filter logcat by current running app(s), default: False
  -I, --ignore-system-tags
                        Filter output by ignoring known system tags, default: False
                        Use --ignore-tag to ignore additional tags if needed
  -t, --tag TAG         Filter output by specified tag(s)
                        This can be specified multiple times, or as a comma separated list
  -i, --ignore-tag IGNORED_TAG
                        Filter output by ignoring specified tag(s)
                        This can be specified multiple times, or as a comma separated list
  -l, --log-level LEVEL [V|D|I|W|E|F|v|d|i|w|e|f]
                        Filter messages lower than minimum log level, default: V
  -r, --regex REGEX     Filter output messages using the specified REGEX
  -x, --pid-width X     Width of PID column, default: 6
  -n, --package-width N
                        Width of package/process name column, default: 20
  -m, --tag-width M     Width of tag column, default: 20
  -s, --serial DEVICE_SERIAL
                        Device serial number
  -o, --output FILE_PATH
                        Output filename

📚 Examples

Example 1: Basic Package Filtering

pidcat com.example.myapp

Shows all logs from com.example.myapp with colorized output.

Example 2: Multiple Tags with Custom Width

pidcat com.example.myapp -t Network -t Database -m 25 -n 30

Shows logs with Network or Database tags, with 30-char package column and 25-char tag column.

Example 3: Debug Level Only

pidcat com.example.myapp -l D

Shows only Debug, Info, Warning, Error, and Fatal logs (filters out Verbose).

Example 4: Save to File Without Colors

pidcat com.example.myapp -o logs.txt -n

Saves logs to logs.txt without color codes.

Example 5: Current App with Specific Tags

pidcat --current -t MainActivity -t ServiceManager --always-display-tags

Monitors the currently running app, showing only MainActivity and ServiceManager tags.

Example 6: Complex Regex Filtering

pidcat com.example.myapp -t "^(Network|Http).*Client$"

Matches tags like NetworkClient, HttpClient, NetworkSocketClient, etc.

Example 7: Ignore Verbose Tags

pidcat com.example.myapp -i Chatty -i Verbose -l I

Shows Info level and above, ignoring tags containing "Chatty" or "Verbose".

🔨 Building from Source

Prerequisites
- Android SDK with ADB in PATH
- Rust latest version
- Git for version control
- Inno Setup for Windows installer
Build Steps
- Update Version
  - Edit Cargo.toml and set the version variable
- Run Build Task
```
cargo make build-all
```
  or
```
cargo make rebuild-installer
```
- Output Locations
  - Debug Executable: target/debug/PidCat.exe
  - Release Executable: target/release/PidCat.exe
  - Installer: build/setup/Output/PidCat_<datetime>.exe

⚙️ Configuration

Tag Filtering Behavior

By default, tag filters use substring matching:
```
-t Timeout
```
Matches any tag containing "Timeout": TimeoutJob, NetworkTimeout, TimeoutManager, etc.

To use exact matching or regex patterns, include regex special characters:
```
-t "^TimeoutJob$"  # Exact match only
-t "Timeout.*Job"  # Regex pattern
```
Column Width Adjustment

Adjust column widths to fit your terminal:
```
pidcat com.example.app -m 25 -n 30
```
- Package column: 25 characters
- Tag column: 30 characters
- Packages/Tags longer than width are truncated
Color Customization

Colors are automatically allocated to tags and packages using an LRU cache. Predefined colors exist for common Android tags like ActivityManager, DEBUG, etc.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

Fork the Repository
Create a Feature Branch
```
git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature
```

Commit Your Changes

git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature'

Push to the Branch
```
git push origin feature/amazing-feature
```
Open a Pull Request
Development Guidelines
- Add comments for complex logic
- Test on Windows 10/11
- Update documentation for new features

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License 3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Credits

Original Author
- Jake Wharton - Original PidCat creator
Windows Fork Maintainer
- AbdElMoniem ElHifnawy - Windows optimizations and enhancements
- GitHub: @abdalmoniem
- Website: abdalmoniem-alhifnawy.is-a.dev
Contributors

Thanks to all contributors who have helped improve PidCat!

Made with ❤️ for Android Developers

If you find PidCat useful, please ⭐ star the repository!

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 41 Commits
.cargo		.cargo
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
.helix		.helix
.vscode		.vscode
assets		assets
build		build
src		src
.gitignore		.gitignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
Cargo.lock		Cargo.lock
Cargo.toml		Cargo.toml
Justfile		Justfile
LICENSE.md		LICENSE.md
Makefile.toml		Makefile.toml
README.md		README.md
cliff.toml		cliff.toml
cliff_body.tera		cliff_body.tera
cliff_body_ci.tera		cliff_body_ci.tera
resources.rc		resources.rc

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📃 PidCat Rust

🎯 Overview

📸 Screenshots

✨ Features

Core Features

Advanced Filtering

Display Options

Output Options

📥 Installation

Installer Binaries

From Source

Prerequisites

Installation Steps

🚀 Usage

Basic Usage

Advanced Filtering

Command Line Options

📚 Examples

🔨 Building from Source

Prerequisites

Build Steps

Update Version

Run Build Task

Output Locations

⚙️ Configuration

Tag Filtering Behavior

Column Width Adjustment

Color Customization

🤝 Contributing

Fork the Repository

Create a Feature Branch

Commit Your Changes

Push to the Branch

Open a Pull Request

Development Guidelines

📄 License

🙏 Credits

Original Author

Windows Fork Maintainer

Contributors

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