Knowledge Base/Troubleshooting

Locating IDE log files

Serge Baranov
posted this on Mar 13 05:58

The easiest way to find the product log file is the Help menu, the item name would depend on the IDE version and OS:

  • Show Log in Explorer
  • Show Log in Finder
  • Show Log in Konqueror/Nautilus
  • Reveal Log in Explorer
  • Reveal Log in Finder/Finder/Nautilus
2013-03-13_08-42-23.png
Log file is named idea.log and is rotated basing on the file size. When attaching logs to your problem report it's recommended to zip and send several latest log files (idea.log, idea.log.1, idea.log.2, idea.log.3).

Can't access Help menu, how do I find the log file manually?

When IDE doesn't start or you can't access Help menu, locate the log file manually:

IntelliJ IDEA External Build logs

When using external make IDE starts a separate process for compilation, this process writes logs into the %idea.log.path%\build-log\build.log file. Attach this file as well if you are reporting problems related to compilation and external build is enabled.

For the more verbose logging edit build-log.xml file (located in the same directory), change <priority value="info" /> to <priority value="debug" />.

It's recommended that you delete the existing log files, start the IDE, reproduce the problem, then attach all the produced log files.