Android - Set max length of logcat messages

Break it up in several pieces recursively.

public static void largeLog(String tag, String content) {
   if (content.length() > 4000) {
       Log.d(tag, content.substring(0, 4000));
       largeLog(tag, content.substring(4000));
   } else {
       Log.d(tag, content);
   }
}

for( String line : logMesg.split("\n") ) {
    Log.d( TAG, line );
}

There is a fixed size buffer in logcat for binary logs (/dev/log/events) and this limit is 1024 bytes. For the non-binary logs there is also a limit:

#define LOGGER_ENTRY_MAX_LEN        (4*1024)
#define LOGGER_ENTRY_MAX_PAYLOAD (LOGGER_ENTRY_MAX_LEN - sizeof(struct logger_entry))

So the real message size for both binary and non-binary logs is ~4076 bytes. The kernel logger interface imposes this LOGGER_ENTRY_MAX_PAYLOAD limit.

The liblog sources (used by logcat) also say:

• The message may have been truncated by the kernel log driver.

I would recommend you the nxlog tool which does not use the logcat binary, but due to the limitations in the kernel I doubt that it will solve your problem. Nevertheless, it might be worth a try. (disclaimer: I'm the author.)

Ok, interesting. I was disappointed to see that the answer was "you can't really expand it". My initial thought was to break it up so I could view the whole thing, so here I share with you how I do just that (not that it's anything fancy nor is it near efficient, but it gets the job done in a pinch):

if (sb.length() > 4000) {
    Log.v(TAG, "sb.length = " + sb.length());
    int chunkCount = sb.length() / 4000;     // integer division
    for (int i = 0; i <= chunkCount; i++) {
        int max = 4000 * (i + 1);
        if (max >= sb.length()) {
            Log.v(TAG, "chunk " + i + " of " + chunkCount + ":" + sb.substring(4000 * i));
        } else {
            Log.v(TAG, "chunk " + i + " of " + chunkCount + ":" + sb.substring(4000 * i, max));
        }
    }
} else {
    Log.v(TAG, sb.toString());
}

Edited to show the last string!