How to exclude certain messages by TAG name using Android adb logcat?

Question

Logcat allows filtering logs but it works like that: You define filters and logcat only displays messages which matches filters. But is there a way to display all logs EXCEPT some TAGs defined by filters?

Answer 1

You can do this from within DDMS Monitor (and also Eclipse or Android Studio) with the regular expression input box and negative look-ahead assertions, for example I am excluding a lot of noise from my log with the following:

tag:^(?!(WifiMulticast|WifiHW|MtpService|PushClient))

(The "tag:" isn't part of the regular expression, but tells LogCat to only apply the regex to the Tag field. If you use this trick in a saved filter then put just the regular expression in the "Tag" input box, and omit the "tag:" prefix)

In Android Studio's logcat monitor pane, you can set up a saved filter for this by opening the dropdown in the upper right (it may have "Show only selected application" selected) and selecting Edit Filter Configuration. Create a new logcat filter and put ^(?!(WifiMulticast ...etc. )) in the Log Tag box, with the Regex checkbox checked.