How to debug your Unity3D Android application in Visual Studio

Here’s how to debug an Unity3D Android application on a real device (not in Unity3D editor) over WIFI in Visual Studio. This recipe is written for Unity 2017.4 and Visual Studio 2017, maybe it works also in other versions.

Prerequisites:

1] Connect your Android phone to the same WIFI station as your development computer
2] Connect your Android phone with USB cable to your development computer

Step 1]  Connect to device with ADB

• Get the IP number of your Android phone  with command ‘adb shell ip addr show wlan0’:

$ adb shell ip addr show wlan0
 24: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 3000
 link/ether 2c:fd:a1:8c:dc:f1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
 inet 192.168.25.221/22 brd 192.168.27.255 scope global wlan0
 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 inet6 fe80::2efd:a1ff:fe8c:dcf1/64 scope link
 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

IP adress in this case is:  192.168.25.221

• Make a connection using adb connect

If connect fails take a look at https://stackoverflow.com/a/41422712/676402

$ adb connect 192.168.25.221
connected to 192.168.25.221:5555

•  Disconnect phone from USB cable
• Check WIFI connection with to device with:

$ adb devices
 List of devices attached
 192.168.25.221:5555 device

Step 2] Prepare debug version of Unity3D app

In Unity3D, go to Android build settings and check ‘Development Build’ and ‘Script Debugging’: 

Now deploy and run your application (control-b). It’s important to run the application because otherwise the AndroidPlayer debugger will not show up in the next dialog.

Step 3] Set Visual Studio breakpoint and debug

Now in Visual Studio open a script and put a breakpoint.

Go to Debug -> Attach Unity debugger and a dialog with two debuggers should appear (one for Unity3D editor, one for Android device):

Select the ‘AndroidPlayer (USB)’ item and Visual Studio goes in debug mode. Note: This step can take a while if then Unity project is big.

Now run the application on the device and the breakpoint should be hit 🙂