Console app not showing info and debug logs

App & System Services Core OS
TheDarkKnight OP
Created Jul ’17
Replies 32
Boosts 1
Views 37k
Participants 19

I have a Swift 3 Cocoa application that uses Apple's Unified Logging, like this: -


    import os

    class MyClass
    {
        @available(OSX 10.12, *)
        static let scribe = OSLog(subsystem: "com.mycompany.myapp", category: "myapp")

        func SomeFunction(){
  
            if #available(OSX 10.12, *){
                os_log("Test Error Message", log: MyClass.scribe, type: .error)
            }

            if #available(OSX 10.12, *){
                os_log("Test Info Message", log: MyClass.scribe, type: .info)
            }

            if #available(OSX 10.12, *){
                os_log("Test Debug Message", log: MyClass.scribe, type: .debug)
            }
        }
    }



Within the Console application, both 

Include Info Messages
and 
Include Debug Messages
are turned on.


When 

os_log
is called, only the 
error
type message is visible in the Console application.

Using Terminal, with the command, all message types are visible in the Terminal output: -


sudo log stream --level debug


I've tried running the Console app as root, via sudo from the command line and the same issue occurs; no debug or info messages can be seen, even though they're set to being turned on under the Action menu.

Setting system-wide logging to be debug, has no effect on the Console application output:

sudo log config --mode level:debug


Please can someone tell me what I'm missing and how can I view debug and info messages in the Console application?

Replies  32
Boosts  1
Views  37k
Participants  19
DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jul ’17

Well, that’s interesting. I can reproduce this problem on my main 10.12.5 machine. Which is weird because I definitely remember seeing those messages on earlier versions of 10.12. So I fired up some VMs and found the following:

  • Console shows info messages on the VM’s 10.12 snapshot

  • Console doesn’t show info messages on its 10.12.5 snapshot

I suspect that this is a known bug (r. 30733532) that’s reported fixed in the current 10.13 beta. Please give it a try there.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
TheDarkKnight OP
Jul ’17

Hi Quinn,


Thanks for getting back to me, I've never had Unified Logging working correctly since it was first introduced, at which time, it only showed logs in the console if we were logging out the stream in the Terminal at the same time.


As requested, I tried on 10.13 (17A306f) with a daemon application I'm developing. When the daemon was first loaded, after installing the application via a pkg, it failed to show any logs. I stopped the daemon (launchctl unload), ran the application from the command line and Console started working as expected. Following that, I restarted the daemon (launchctl load) and it continued working correctly. We'll continue testing around the initial install and let you know if we think there's an issue there and will file a report accordingly.


Should I file a report bug for 10.12.5, or is it likely to just be a repeat?


One other question, the daemon is written in Swift 3 and we still see 'private', printed even though we're using the public attributes %{public}s or %{public}@. Can you tell me if this should work now, in Swift? If I recall correctly, it didn't when Unified Logging was first announced.


Thanks.

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jul ’17

Should I file a report bug for 10.12.5, or is it likely to just be a repeat?

At this point I doubt there’s much benefit to filing a 10.12.x bug for this.

in Swift 3 … we still see 'private', printed even though we're using the public attributes %{public}s or %{public}@. Can you tell me if this should work now, in Swift?

I believe this is still broken )-: It’s definitely worth filing a bug about this one though; it’ll probably get dup’d to an existing bug (r. 33376006) but it’d be helpful to record your specific circumstances (for example, the fact you’re working on macOS and that you’ve tested it on the current 10.13 beta).

Please post your bug number, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
TheDarkKnight OP
Jul ’17

Thanks again Quinn for the rapid response.

Bug submitted: 33423866
nteissler OP
Jul ’18

I'm running 10.14 Beta (18A336e) and was seeing similar behavior, but was able to view the debug messages in the console when I also used the persist option


sudo log config --mode "level:debug,persist:debug" --subsystem com.myapp.myfancylog --category myCategory


This only worked for macOS apps, both command line and cocoa apps. iPhone logs I could never get to show the debug logs anywhere but the xcode console. As another note, I'm not sure if setting the category made any difference.
grangej OP
Sep ’18

Any update on this issue? I am running the GA of Xcode 10 and I am still seeing this issue.

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Oct ’18

Which issue specifically? There’s been a few discussed on this thread.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
marekfort OP
Jan ’19

This should work: 


xcrun simctl spawn booted log stream --debug --predicate 'subsystem == "com.example.yourapp"'


But yeah, the issue still persists and it's quite a shame. I am not sure if a bug has been filed for this, so should I create one? I am quite honestly amazed that this still seems to be an issue.

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jan ’19

But yeah, the issue still persists and it's quite a shame.

What issue are you referring to here? The original issue that started this thread — that is, the inability so see Info and Debug log entries in the Console app (r. 30733532) — was fixed years ago. And the issue reported by nteissler was in a 10.14 beta, and my experience is that it was fixed before 10.14 shipped.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
checkmate OP
Jan ’19

Sample problem here, the message only shows up in the xcode console but not the console.app


import Foundation
import os

public func debug_log(_ category: String = "application", args: Any...) {
  let config = OSLog(subsystem: Bundle.main.bundleIdentifier ?? "application", category: category)
  var string = String()
  for arg in args {
    string.append(String(describing: arg))
    string.append(" ")
  }
  os_log("%s", log: config, type: .debug, string)
}


Mind you this one shows in both xcode & console

os_log("%s", string)


Xcode 10.1, swift 4.x

macOS 10.14.3

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jan ’19

This works on my machine. I took your code, put it into a test app, and ran it on my Mac (I’m still on 10.14.1, but I very much doubted this has changed between that and 10.14.3). I then logged two lines:

NSLog("QQQ NSLog")
debug_log("QQQ OSLog")

I ran the app from Xcode (10.1) and in Xcode’s Console pane I see this:

2019-01-24 09:58:56.179537+0000 xxsm[57057:4028867] QQQ NSLog
2019-01-24 09:58:56.179993+0000 xxsm[57057:4028867] [QQQ OSLog]

and in the Console app I see this:

default
09:58:56.179573 +0000
xxsm
57057
QQQ NSLog

debug
09:58:56.180018 +0000
xxsm
57057
QQQ OSLog

[DevForums doesn’t support screen shots, alas, so I’ve done what I usually do with Console log entries, that is, replace all the tabs with line breaks so that they’re easier to read, and that inserted a line break between each log entry.]

I’m not sure what’s going on in your setup, but this is working for me.

Mind you this one shows in both xcode & console

Are you sure you’ve enabled both Action > Include Info Messages and Action > Include Debug Messages in Console? Calling 

os_log
without an explicit 
type
argument defaults to 
.default
, which will always show up in Console. If you want to see 
.debug
messages, you have to opt in.

ps Your wrapper around 

os_log
is problematic:

  • You’re creating a new 

    OSLog
    object for each log entry. That’s a really bad idea. 
    OSLog
    objects are meant to be long-lived, and by creating a new one each time you’re really hurting your performance.

  • You have a wrapper around 

    os_log
    , which undermines some of its best features. Rather than do that I recommend that you call 
    os_log
    directly at each point you log [1]. You can improve the ergonomics of this by using an extension on 
    OSLog
    for your common subsystems. 
    extension OSLog {
    static let beer: OSLog = OSLog(subsystem: "com.example.apple-samplecode.myapp", category: "beer")
}


os_log(.debug, log: .beer, "%d bottles of beer on the wall", 99)

    .

  • To avoid conflicts with other apps, your subsystem should use reverse DNS name notation (that is, not 

    application
    ).

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

[1] In C based languages you create a wrapper using a macro, but that’s not possible in Swift.
checkmate OP
Jan ’19

opting into debug/info messages via the console doesn't work, only if message is sent as .default or .error shows up.

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jan ’19

Weird, this definitely works on my machine and I can’t think of any reason why it would vary from machine to machine.

Are these log entries generated on your local Mac? Or on an iOS device connected via USB?

If the log messages are generated on your Mac, run 

log stream
to see if the messages show up there (see the 
log
man page for details).

If the log messages are coming from iOS over USB, copy your log generation code into a small Mac program (and command-line tool will work) and see if that affects things.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
robert_edwards OP
Jan ’19

Could this be an issue with the simulator only?


This is what I see on macOS 10.14.2/Xcode 10.1 with an iPhone XR iOS 12.1 simulator. Created a brand new project and added the following os_log lines as a test:


os_log(.debug, "Debug")
os_log(.info, "Info")
os_log("Default")
os_log(.error, "Error")
os_log(.fault, "Fault")


Xcode integrated lldb console output looks like this:


2019-01-29 09:57:19.231834-0500 os_log[19897:6448097] Debug
2019-01-29 09:57:22.628014-0500 os_log[19897:6448097] Info
2019-01-29 09:57:22.628053-0500 os_log[19897:6448303] XPC connection interrupted
2019-01-29 09:57:24.294260-0500 os_log[19897:6448097] Default
2019-01-29 09:57:25.784404-0500 os_log[19897:6448097] Error
2019-01-29 09:57:26.384291-0500 os_log[19897:6448097] Fault


Console App output looks like this:


info Info os_log os_log 09:57:22.628099 -0500
info Info os_log os_log 09:57:22.628099 -0500
default Default os_log os_log 09:57:24.294361 -0500
default Default os_log os_log 09:57:24.294361 -0500
error Error os_log os_log 09:57:25.784490 -0500
error Error os_log os_log 09:57:25.784490 -0500
fault Fault os_log os_log 09:57:26.384440 -0500
fault Fault os_log os_log 09:57:26.384440 -0500


Action menu has Include Info Message and Include Debug Messages turned on and the Search/Filter bar just has Library is os_log (the name of the sample xcode project I created to test).

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jan ’19

Could this be an issue with the simulator only?

I know know if that’s what other folks on this thread are talking about — certainly none of them have mentioned that they’re using the simulator — but I can reproduce the problem that you’ve described. Yay! Well, I mean Boo! because it’s a bug, but Yay! because it’s easily reproduced.

I encourage you to file a bug report about this particular edge case. Please post your bug number, just for the record.

As to workarounds, you can see these log messages by running the 

log
tool in the context of your simulator. For example: 
$ xcrun simctl spawn DB0E33F1-289A-4DE1-A004-64F7ED04E05E log stream --level debug
…
2019-01-30 10:13:31.218490+0000 0x858df2  Debug    0x0       15275  0  xxsi: QQQ Debug
2019-01-30 10:13:31.218606+0000 0x858df2  Info     0x0       15275  0  xxsi: QQQ Info
2019-01-30 10:13:31.218691+0000 0x858df2  Default  0x0       15275  0  xxsi: QQQ Default
2019-01-30 10:13:31.218777+0000 0x858df2  Error    0x0       15275  0  xxsi: QQQ Error
2019-01-30 10:13:31.218927+0000 0x858df2  Fault    0x3a5382  15275  0  xxsi: QQQ Fault
…

Note:

  • DB0E33F1-289A-4DE1-A004-64F7ED04E05E
    is the UUID of my 12.1 simulator; you can get this using 
    xcrun simctl list
    .

  • I added 

    QQQ
    to me log messages to make them easier to spot.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware 

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"
robert_edwards OP
Jan ’19

Sure thing!


Filed Radar: 47667447
alienspaces OP
Jul ’19

Anyone got an update on this? It's still not working in the new Xcode 11 betas. Really dissapointing, when you can't just use the tools for simple things like seeing log messages. I'm not seeing Debug or Info messages from the simulator in Console.


Slightly off topic, does anyone know how to enable Error and Fault messages on an OSLog? Are they supposed to be disabled out of the box when running a debug build? That doesn't seem right, but those OSLogType's are disabled for me, so I'm not seeing messages even in the Xcode output pane.
_vikram OP
Dec ’19

This is in relation to the simulator use case:

Unfortunately, this workaround doesn't seem to work.


I can confirm that when Xcode is used to debug the simulator, the ios app logs are not passed on to the console app (only visible within Xcode output area).
But, when i stop the build and let the simulator run on its own, I can see the ios app logs within the console app/log tool (xcrum simctl).

Is this a bug or is some setting in the project that blocks the propagation of app logs?


iOS 13.1

XCode 11.1 (11A1027)

Mac OS 10.14.6
npvisual OP
Dec ’19

Also filed FB7499453 since there's been no traction on this.
jaekim OP
May ’20

Found this blog:

https://www.iosdev.recipes/simulator/os_log/


saying

=> If you don't see 

debug
level logs, that's because the "system" log level is set to 
info
and can't be changed, so you're only able to see them by specifically using 
log stream
.


not sure if that's the intended behavior Apple has designed or a bug Apple cannot figure it out to fix.


Anyone has more details ? Thanks,
myintruder OP
Jun ’21

Is Apple able to fix this or should we start rolling our own solutions? I'm reading the logs of my app running on iPad(iOS 14.4), using the Console on MacOS (10.15.7), and not getting all the logs. Some times I get some logs, and some times I get not logs at all (from my app). I need the logs that are generated when the app is started by the system, so I can't debug it using Xcode.

I read the whole thread plus the docs, implemented the new unified logging, but no luck. I even get fewer messages with the new shiny architecture, than if I use NSLog.

DTS Engineer OP
Apple
Jun ’21

Is Apple able to fix this … ?

I’m not aware of any ongoing problems with Console not showing logs from real devices attached via USB. The original issue here dates back several years and was definitely resolved. And the other bugs referenced upthread (r. 47667447 and FB7499453) all seem to relate to the simulator.

I'm reading the logs of my app running on iPad (iOS 14.4), using the Console on macOS (10.15.7), and not getting all the logs.

Unfortunately I’m not in a position to set up your exact test (DevForums has already consumed way too much of my day)-: but I did test this on up-to-date kit (Xcode 12.4 on macOS 11.4 talking to an iPhone 12 mini running iOS 14.6) and didn’t see any problems.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
pj4533_evertrue OP
Aug ’21

I know this has been an epic long running thread, but just to clarify:

  1. There is still a bug where debug messages from the simulator do not show up in the console app (I see them fine in Xcode's console & have the console app debug/info options on). Also see them if I use the 'xcrun simctl spawn log stream' command line that was posted a couple years back.

  2. There is no way to do filtering of os_log messages inside Xcode, that is only supported in the console app (where they don't show up due to the above issue)

Thanks in advance! Just trying to decide if I want to invest in OSLog now.

-pj
dawmster OP
Feb ’23

It's 2023 and this bug is still present, hilarious but horrendous. Seems I need to brush Objective-C++ and integrate some sane solution like spdlogger, would be better.
smirkjosh OP
Aug ’23

I still have this bug. The logs only show up if you use error or fault which is a bit ridiculous.

Console app not showing info and debug logs
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