Debug on an Android device

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This article explains how to debug a Xamarin.Android application on a physical Android device.

It is possible to debug a Xamarin.Android app on an Android device using either Visual Studio for Mac or Visual Studio. Before debugging can occur on a device, it must be setup for development and connected to your PC or Mac.

Debug Application

Once a device is connected to your computer, debugging a Xamarin.Android application is done in the same way as any other Xamarin product or .NET application. Ensure that the Debug configuration and the external device is selected in the IDE, this will ensure that the necessary debug symbols are available and that the IDE can connect to the running application:

Debug configuration selected

Next, a breakpoint is set in the code:

Breakpoint set at line of code

Once the device has been selected, Xamarin.Android will connect to the device, deploy the application, and then run it. When the breakpoint is reached, the debugger will stop the application, allowing the application to be debugged in a fashion similar to any other C# application:

Breakpoint reached

Summary

In this document discussed how to debug a Xamarin.Android application by setting a breakpoint and selecting the target device.