# Improving App Debugging with Flipper

DevFeed: [Improving App Debugging with Flipper](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/improving-app-debugging-with-flipper-25110.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://michaelevans.org/blog/2020/03/10/improving-app-debugging-with-flipper/>)

Author: Michael Evans

Published: 2020-03-11T00:10:22Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Gadget Habit](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/gadget-habit.md>)

Topics: [debug](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debug.md>), [Android](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/android.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [SQLite](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sqlite.md>), [ide](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ide.md>)

Tags: [android](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android.md>), [android-studio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android-studio.md>), [api](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [debugging](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debugging.md>), [plugins](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/plugins.md>), [sqlite](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sqlite.md>)

## AI overview

This article introduces Flipper, Facebook's mobile debugging tool and successor to Stetho. It explains how to set up Flipper in an Android application and demonstrates its Inspector and database plugins for real-time layout inspection, property experimentation, database browsing, and live SQL queries.

## Source excerpt

Some time last year, Facebook released a new mobile debugging tool, named Flipper. It's essentially the successor to the widely popular Stetho. Although after talking to many developers, it seems like this newer tool is relatively unknown. Like Stetho, Flipper has many built-in features - including a layout inspector, a database inspector and a network inspector. Unlike Stetho though, Flipper has a very extensible API which allows for tons of customization. Over the next few articles, we're going to take a look at Flipper and its plugins, the APIs it provides, and how we can leverage them to help us debug various parts of our app. This post will focus on getting set up with Flipper, as well as taking a look at two of its most useful default plugins. Getting Started Getting started with Flipper is really easy: Download the desktop client, Add the dependencies in your build.gradle: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 repositories { jcenter() } dependencies { debugImplementation 'com.facebook.flipper:flipper:0.33.1' debugImplementation 'com.facebook.soloader:soloader:0.8.2' releaseImplementation 'com.facebook.flipper:flipper-noop:0.33.1' } Initialize the Flipper client when your application starts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 class SampleApplication : Application() { override fun onCreate() { super.onCreate() SoLoader.init(this, false) if (BuildConfig.DEBUG && FlipperUtils.shouldEnableFlipper(this)) { val client = AndroidFlipperClient.getInstance(this) client.addPlugin(InspectorFlipperPlugin(this, DescriptorMapping.withDefaults())) client.start() } } } And that's it! Opening the desktop client should show you an overview of your app with the Inspector plugin configured. Inspector Plugin The Inspector Plugin is similar to the one found in Android Studio 4.0, but has a few neat features. I like it because it operates in real-time, and doesn't require any attaching to process in Studio every time you want to inspect a layout. Another thing you can do in the Layout Inspector that's really