Running Hierarchy Viewer

Question

I am trying to run Hierarchy Viewer. developer.android.com says to

"Connect your device or launch an emulator.

From a terminal, launch hierarchyviewer from your SDK /tools directory."

I tried finding the hierarchy viewer in sdk/tools, but couldn't find it. I realize my difficulty may just be the result of me being a total noob so I could just be missing something basic.

What is a terminal? Do I need to start a java terminal to execute the viewer? If so, how?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I assume you are on windows.. to open a terminal window run start -> run and type "cmd". You should see a black window with a cursor.

You need to open the tools directory by typing cd C:\full\path\to\tools\directory filling in the path to where you installed the sdk.

If you type dir you should see a list of files located within the folder, one of which is hierarchyviewer.exe. Run that file (just type hierarchyviewer.exe)

Answer 2

(Sorry, I was meant to add this as a comment to Mayra's answer below)

I was using SDK_r06 and HierarchyViewer.exe was in the /tools folder.

I upgraded to SDK_r07 (using Android SDK and AVD Manager) and now HierarchyViewer.exe is not in the /tools folder.

I re-downloaded the SDK from the Android website and it is not in the /tools folder.

Has it been left out of the SDK_r07 release of the SDK?

Answer 3

Just had the same issue. It looks like version 7 of SDK Tools does not include the executable for unknown reason (you may download the SDK and see that it's not there). Therefore, an update removes the executable even if it was there before. However, the executable is not an *.exe, but just a *.bat, which uses the HierarchyViewer.jar in the lib folder.

So I just copied the hierarchyviewer.bat file from the 6th version into the tools folder and it worked.
Note, that you have to type hierarchyviewer or hierarchyviewer.bat to start it, not hierarchyviewer.exe.