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Debugview++ v1.20.x.x (Summer 2025 Update coming soon!)

new features: capture kernel messages, verbose mode and pass-through mode, big thanks to x64bugreport and 593749519 for providing information, contributions and test scenarios.
fixed #365: support for messages from UWP applications (poorly tested), feedback welcome!
fixed #396: depending on the runtime dlls, this broke when we moved to cmake, now we link the runtime statically again.
fixed title bar not being updated when 'Global Win32' was toggled.
new commandline argument /tab:<name> to select a tab that get focus at startup, contributed by KirisameMarisa
removed color support from 'include' filter by request (a highlight filter can still achieve the same result), contributed by Ishmaeel.
faster building by adding /MP.

-- Notice:

This project is in low-maintenance mode, this means new features are only added if PRs are provided with tests.
Updates are limited to keeping the status-quo and OS-related updated.
I'm looking for maintainers, so if you would like to join me in bugfixing or adding features, please let me know.
2022 update: The project was migrated to VS2022 and boost 1.80, WindowsXP (32 bit) support was removed.
the OutputForwarder companion extension for VS2022 can be found in the Visual Studio Marketplace
nuget.exe can be downloaded from https://www.nuget.org/downloads

Debugview++, currently at v1.9 (2024 Update!)

Download latest release, I would really like to hear what you think! Leave any comments here

Download head version ** only pick this if your feeling lucky and want to try the latest commits **

Questions? Find me at @janwilmans.bsky.social or chat on discord as 'janwilmans'. There is also a slack channel. If you need an invite, go here.

Debugview++ started as a viewer for Win32 OutputDebugString messages in the style of Sysinternals DebugView. However, it can now be attached to virtually any other kind of logging, such as:

tailing ascii and UTF logfiles (just drag it onto the window)
Android ADB (or any console based standard output)
serial ports (using plink)
sockets, telnet or ssh ports (also using plink)
it can listen for UDP messages, handy in distributed systems

See examples down below.

So when is this Debugview++ thing useful?

first of all, with debugview++ you can see messages from different processes, not just 'attached' processes.
also: filtering, coloring and linking. To make sense of a large amount of information humans need to filter it or order it understand it. Also it helps if important events have different colors to quickly interpret the occurring patterns.
finally, filtering is nice, but sometimes you need to see a line in its context to understand it, this is where linked views can help to quickly switch between a fully filtered view and a fully detailed view.

New in stable version 1.8.x:

bugfixes (namely in file-tailing)
tested on windows 10
last version with (official) XP support (v141_xp target)
internal refactoring from boost to C++11/14 constructs
better commandline support using docopt.cpp
added filtering command line options
no other new features planned, if you're missing something you need, file an issue!

Features we dream about and will create when we choose to spend the time:

a gantt chart-like view, a horizontal timeline, with bars/flags/signs on it to identify events
a better plugin based input system
transparent background streaming to disk
proper memory limits

Known issues:

the history limit doesn't work right, this is troublesome for long-running duration-tests. A workaround is to send 'DBGVIEWCLEAR' before each test-cycle (this clears all logs from memory).
there is no 'pass-through' mode like the original dbgview had, if you can help me implement this, please contact me.
same goes for catching kernel messages, help wanted.

References

OutputDebugString on MSDN

Screenshot

DebugView++ Screenshot

Here are some features:

single selfcontaining executable, setup is provided but not required
minimal delay of the traced application, compared to the original dbgview a factor of 10 better.
fast and responsive user-interface, even with +50.000 incoming lines per second
runs without prerequisites on WinXPSP3 and up (v1.5 and earlier also on WinXPSP2)
in-memory compressed logbuffer using google snappy (typically -50% RAM consumption)
tailing files (drag ascii or UTF files into debugview to tail it)

And more features:

capture both Win32 and Global Win32 messages
tabbed views
resolve process PID to name and track their lifetime
filter by process or message
advanced filtering, exclude, track, stop, clear (optionally using regular expressions)
line and token highlighting (create your own syntax highlighting)
SAIT (search-as-I-type) + token highlighting
bookmarks
statusbar shows detailed log/view/selection information
open saved logs for post-mortem analysis
commandline version
capture stdin piped messages, allows you to connect any kind of logging
beep-filter for monitoring without seeing the screen (To hear it make sure a 'Default Beep' sound is defined in Control Panel->Sounds)
clear Log now releases the message buffer instead of reusing the memory (useful when running debugview for a very long time)
tailing logfiles over samba network (experimental)
support for reading and tailing Sysinternals Dbgview logfiles (in the four most common formats)
socket listening, Log->Sources->Add can add TCP and UDP listeners, the protocol is sending raw newline terminated strings. Multiple lines can be send in one packet.
dbgview agent client mode allowing logging of kernel messages
timezone independent and human readable timestamps in the logfiles
add basic support for unicode, UTF-8 via OutputDebugString and both UTF8 and UTF16 with BOMs when reading files
View->Process Colors, easy way to give every process its own color!
Options->Link views, best effort to synchronize the line-selection over all views

Download old version (stable, dated 20 Sept 2015)

Screenshot demonstrating bookmarks and highlighting features.

Highlighted:

regex (token filter): [^\s]*\\[\\\w+\.\s]+ filenames in blue
regex (token filter): 0x\w+ hexadecimal numbers in red
regex (highlight filter): Unittest lines with the word 'Unittest' have a lightgreen background
a doubleclick on 'bytes' causes all instances of 'bytes' to highlight in yellow

See http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/regex/ECMAScript/ for all options for supported regular expressions

Android ADB example:

DebugView++ Screenshot

Screenshot demonstrating connecting to ADB logcat (Android Debug Bridge)

More examples

Connect any pipe:

To connect directly to a port or service, plink can be used, make sure an instance of debugview++ is already running before running this command:

plink -ssh -batch -v 192.168.0.1 2>&1 | debugview++

Notice that 2>&1 is used before the pipe (|) symbol to redirect stderr to stdout.

Connect to sysinternals dbgview agent for kernel messages:

Example: connect to sysinternals DbgView Agent, first start Dbgview.exe /a /k (/k for kernel messages) And connect DebugView++ using Log->Connect DebugView Agent. Note that 'Log->Connect DebugView Agent' assumes the agent is running on the same workstation as DebugView++ so it connects to 127.0.0.1. If you need to connect to a remote agent, use Log->Sources...->Add->DbgView Agent and fill in the ip-address.

Use RegexGroups + Token Highlighting:

Suppose you want to highlight some dat

DebugViewPP

Install / Use

README