Developer Assistant

Jarosław Wiśniewski

In-app purchases

About this app

A powerful debugging app for Android. Developer Assistant makes debugging native Android apps as simple as debugging web pages using Chrome’s Developer Tools. Allows you to inspect the View hierarchy, verify Layout, Style, preview Translations and more. Everything can be done directly from the mobile device. Best suited for apps based on Views and Fragments, with limited support of technologies like Android Compose, Flutter and Web apps.

Developer Assistant uses a mixture of official Assist and Accessibility API, augmented by sophisticated heuristics. This combination helps to show at runtime more than possible for other tools. It’s tailored to increase productivity of professionals like Developers, Testers, Designers and Power Users in their day to day geeky tasks.

Developer Assistant is… right, the assistant app, you can invoke it at any time by a simple gesture like long pressing the home button.

INSPECT NATIVE AND HYBRID ANDROID APPS

Developer Assistant can inspect Android applications based on the official Android SDK. It is best suited for apps based on Views and Fragments. Has also limited support for Android Compose, Flutter, Web-based apps and webpages.

KEEP CALM & PRIVACY

Developer Assistant DOES NOT require root. It respects system security and user privacy. Any data collected from the screen is processed locally (offline) and only on explicit user request - when the assist function is invoked. For basic operation, Developer Assistant needs to be chosen as the default Digital Assistant app. Optionally, it may be granted with Accessibility Service permission (which increases accuracy of inspection for non standard apps).

WHAT YOU GET FOR FREE

A 30 day trial of probably the most advanced assistant app dedicated to Android Developers, Testers, Designers and Power Users. After this period, decide: get a professional license or stay with free, a bit limited, however still usable application.

CHECK CURRENT ACTIVITY

Developers can check the class name of a current activity, especially helpful for larger projects. Testers will appreciate a unified solution to access the app version name, version code along with common actions like ‘app info’ or ‘uninstall’.

INSPECT VIEW HIERARCHY

Testers writing automation tests and developers chasing bugs can inspect the hierarchy of elements displayed on the screen, directly from the mobile device. The concept is similar to the inspection of web pages with well-known dev tools shipped with the leading web browsers.

✔ Inspect view identifiers, class names, text style or color.
✔ Preview the best matching layout resources displayed next to their root views.

VERIFY LAYOUT

Designers, testers and developers can finally check the size and position of various elements presented directly on the mobile device. Did you ever wonder what is the exact distance of a given button to a given text label on a particular device? Or maybe, what is the size of a particular element in density points? Developer Assistant provides a toolkit to help verify and satisfy requirements from designers like the pixel or rather the DP perfect design.

SEE CONTEXT OF TRANSLATIONS

Developer Assistant gives translation offices the possibility to display translation keys next to text elements, directly on a mobile device. Translators get what’s the most important in order to provide a quality translation: the context where a given text is used.

✔ Translation keys displayed next to text elements.
✔ Translations for other languages can be previewed (no need to change the language of a mobile device).
✔ Minimum and maximum length among existing translations.

AND MORE...

Stay tuned for new features to come!

LINKS

✔ The project home page: https://appsisle.com/project/developer-assistant/
✔ The wiki addressing common questions: https://github.com/jwisniewski/android-developer-assistant/wiki
✔ Example usage on a video tutorial for designers (made by Design Pilot): https://youtu.be/SnzXf91b8C4

Ratings and reviews

The app told me to wait for more than 30 minutes to show some internals for the selected object on the screen, then my phone couldn't take screenshot. I waited the 30+ minutes (in one case about an hour with app open at all times), the promised information wasn't shown. Then the timer would reset if I changed to a different tab. I don't know if you consider this normal mechanics, but the timer could easily be dropped down to 30 seconds (most ads are). The info's cut off too I have changed to 3 ⭐

My Google account was cloned without my knowledge & permission. I spent the last 2 year's frustrated with technology & unable to figure out how / what was going on in the background of my phone due to a firewall partition. With FREE trial I was able to identify & figure out how to [undo] the rewritten script & what programs had been compromised. I'm not the I. T. type & didn't know what the Play Store was 2 year's ago, but thanks to this app I was finally able to solve the problem. Thank you!

Thanks for updating the app. I am glad that it is working with Compose now. I will support your work.

What’s new

1.4.x

✔ Improved support for Android Compose, Flutter and Web apps - if you were not happy from the past experience, try the new integration with Accessibility service, which helps to patch view hierarchy, where it was inaccurate / missing.

✔ Improved accuracy of XML layouts prediction.

✔ Improved detection of string resources - works well with Android Compose.

✔ Updated privacy policy (app behaviour did not change).

1.3.x

✔ Improved support for recent Android devices.