zed-logcat (zlc)

Readable, navigable Android logcat for the Zed editor.

zlc runs adb logcat (or reads a piped stream) and renders it so logs are colorized, app-filtered, and — the headline payoff — stack frames are clickable: Cmd+click (macOS) / Ctrl+click (Linux/Win) a frame in Zed's integrated terminal and Zed opens the source at that exact line.

It is a standalone CLI, intended as a dependency of a forthcoming zed-android extension (Zed extensions are WASM and cannot render terminal output, so the log view must be an external CLI). It wraps adb directly and needs only adb on your PATH.

Features

• Clickable app frames — stack frames are rewritten to worktree-relative path:line tokens Zed links on click; framework frames are dimmed and made non-clickable (no dead clicks).
• Level-painted output — reverse-video level chip and the whole line colored by severity (16-color ANSI, so it follows your Zed theme); a vertical connector ties multi-line blocks (wrapped messages, crashes) together.
• Assembled crashes — multi-line Java traces collapse into one block with the Caused by: chain; the FATAL EXCEPTION block always shows (bypasses filters).
• Robust crashes — native (#NN pc) backtraces are grouped and non-navigable; an R8/minified trace gets a "retrace with mapping.txt" hint.
• Filtering — app-only via PID following (ActivityManager lifecycle + pidof seed, multi-process aware), tag include/exclude globs, and a minimum level.
• Dedupe — consecutive identical lines collapse to a ×N counter.
• Width-aware — shrinks then drops the tag column on narrow panes.
• Live or replay — auto-detects a piped stdin; otherwise tails adb logcat with a responsive idle-flush so a quiet app's last line/crash surfaces promptly.

Deferred: --json NDJSON (awaiting a consumer).

Install

brew install himattm/zlc/zlc

Or download a prebuilt binary (macOS arm64/x86_64, Linux musl arm64/x86_64) from the Releases page, or build from source with cargo build --release (binary at target/release/zlc). adb must be on your PATH either way.

Usage

zlc                          # tails adb logcat; needs a device/emulator
zlc -p com.example.app       # app-only (follows the package across relaunches)
zlc < fixtures/crash.log     # reads stdin; replay a capture, no device
adb logcat | zlc             # reads stdin; live piped stream

Common flags (run zlc --help for all):

flag	meaning
-p, --package <PKG>	follow an app package (app-only filtering); repeatable
-t, --tag <GLOB> / -T, --exclude-tag <GLOB>	include / exclude tags (crashes bypass)
-m, --min-level <V..F>	minimum level to show
-s, --serial <SERIAL>	target device (alias --device)
-c, --clear	clear the buffer before tailing
--crash	read the crash buffer
--root <DIR>	base for clickable paths (default: $ZED_WORKTREE_ROOT → Gradle root → cwd)
--color <auto|always|never>	color control (honors NO_COLOR)
--no-dedupe	disable ×N collapsing

adb must be on your PATH (same as pidcat).

Configuration — zlc.toml

Commit a zlc.toml at the project root for a shared, per-project style (app_packages, source_roots, min_level, dedupe, tag_width, wrap, mute_tags). CLI flags override it. See templates/ for the file and the .zed/ task + settings assets the zed-android extension places.

Build & test

cargo build --release        # binary at target/release/zlc
cargo test                   # full suite runs with no device and no adb present
cargo run --example render_samples -- tests/fixtures/session.log   # render demo