Visual Studio how to disable VS Output Window's auto scrolling to bottom during Android/Xamarin debug run?

user_480859 0
Viewed 1445

I am losing my mind ...wondering how could the following behaviour be the shipped default user experience in Visual Studio where all technologies involved are Microsoft-made:

  • use microsoft visual studio (2019)
  • use microsoft Xamarin.Forms to make an app
  • run the app in debug mode to see updates in the VS Output window
  • every new line that comes in through logcat from my phone to VS, force auto-scrolls Visual Studio's builtin Output window to the bottom and there's no way to stop it?!

I have to either: 1. stop running the app and read the output. Or 2. futilely wrestle with the damn scrollbar and fight Visual Studio to try to maintain the output window's scroll on a specific position enough moments to read anything.

How did this get past any internal QA for Xamarin? Did they ever try to, you know, make an app? Am I blind? Is there an easy way to stop auto scrolling? Why isn't it enabled by default? The default behavior should be: if the scrollbar is all the way to the bottom, then auto-scroll, sure. But if the scrollbar has been moved by the user, then stop auto-scrolling for the love of god! (this is common sense in many other software)

Also, there's no button on the Output window that locks the scrolling.

xamarin logcat visual-studio android debugging
2 Answers

This is a hack not a solution, but it works: Just Ctrl+F anything in the Output window. As long as and while it has found / highlighted something, the auto-scrolling will be locked/stopped. (and you can still use the scrollbar manually)

So the functionality IS already in VS. Just MS didn't bother to add a scroll lock button for it, or have a manual scroll override. Microsoft has this lovely track record of insistently not using their own products in a way that actual human beings (read: not imaginary simple target personas) will definitely need to use them.

Release a Microsoft dev environment that can't have a pausable (readable) Output window? Microsoft: Sure, why not? We don't see the problem here. Why would you ever want to read the output of your application? What an edge case!

user_4808590

Try placing the caret (in the Output window) somewhere other than at the bottom. If I click somewhere in the output other than at the very end, Visual Studio will stop scrolling to the bottom. I haven't tried it with an Android/Xamarin project, but I assume the output window behaves the same for all project types.

user_1497520
Related