Winforms reflector app

Question

Years ago I had seen a tool that when running would allow you to click on a running Winforms application and it would reflect on whatever portion you clicked on to display properties etc of the code. (It saved some time as you could find the exact form/panel/tab etc. that a control lived in)

eg. I have a Winforms app with tabs, panels, etc. With the tool running I click on a button that resides somewhere in one of the tab/panels and it shows which form, panel, etc. the button is in and it's other properties, events and what not.

I can't for the life of me remember what the name of this nifty little tool was, and I haven't been able to conjure up the right question for Google to give me the answer.

Does anyone know what the name of this app is? where I can get it? Thanks :)

Answer 1

You can use Spy++ which allows you to target a part of your windows form and receive / updated information regarding it.

Is that what you are looking for?

Another alternative is Winspector.

Answer 2

A few other options that I found, that are directed at .NET:

• Hawkeye (this continually broke, or simply didn't work with my application)
• ManagedSpy (There was an issue with the c++ ManagedSpyLib that prevented it from ever working for me)
• WinSpy++ (Similary to Spy++, which was more low level than I wanted as it gave me memory locations etc. but not the ability to explore the managed objects)
• RuntimeObjectEditor (This worked for me without problems and gave me all the information I was initially after)

Hopefully that helps anyone else looking for what I was =) Thanks.