Disable LogCat Output COMPLETELY in release Android app?

Shutting off my own app's LogCat output before releasing an app to the market is straightforward. I also know how to selectively filter LogCat message by tag and/or id for my own debug convenience.

But now I am interested in something that may be much more difficult (perhaps impossible?): Disable all LogCat output, including & especially those coming from 3rd-party services like TtsService, GoogleLoginService, etc.

Is this possible?

To further clarify: I am not interested in filtering out messages for myself. I am rather interested in disabling 3rd-party messages for whoever downloads my app from the Android Market. Is this possible?

You can use ProGuard to remove completely any lines where a return value is not used, by telling ProGuard to assume that there will be no problems.

The following proguard.cfg chunk instructs to remove Log.d, Log.v and Log.i calls.

-assumenosideeffects class android.util.Log {
    public static *** d(...);
    public static *** w(...);
    public static *** v(...);
    public static *** i(...);
}

The end result is that these log lines are not in your release apk, and therefore any user with logcat won't see d/v/i logs.

if you don't use proguard, you have to manage the log yourself and in the manifest file make dubuggable false

<application
    android:name="MyApplication"
    android:icon="@drawable/gift"
    android:label="@string/app_name" android:debuggable="@bool/build_log">

Here my custom log class

public class Lol {

	public static final boolean ENABLE_LOG = true & MyApplication.sDebug;
	
	private static final boolean DEBUG = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	private static final boolean VERBOSE = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	private static final boolean TEMP = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	private static final boolean WARNING = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	private static final boolean INFO = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	private static final boolean ERROR = true & ENABLE_LOG;

	public static void obvious(String tag, String msg) {
		if (DEBUG) {
			msg = "*********************************\n" + msg
					+ "\n*********************************";
			Log.d(tag, msg);
		}
	}

	public static void d(String tag, String msg) {
		if (DEBUG)
			Log.d(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void d(boolean bool, String tag, String msg) {
		if (TEMP&bool)
			Log.d(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void i(String tag, String msg) {
		if (INFO)
			Log.i(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void e(String tag, String msg) {
		if (ERROR)
			Log.e(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void e(boolean bool, String tag, String msg) {
		if (TEMP&bool)
			Log.e(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void v(String tag, String msg) {
		if (VERBOSE)
			Log.v(tag, msg);
	}

	public static void w(String tag, String msg) {
		if (WARNING)
			Log.w(tag, msg);
	}

	public static String getStackTraceString(Exception e) {
		return Log.getStackTraceString(e);
	}

	public static void w(String tag, String msg, Exception e) {
		if (WARNING)
			Log.w(tag, msg,e);
	}
}

The great answer provided by David Caunt doesn't seem to work for the rules defined in proguard-android-optimize.txt.

Instead of using the wildcard ***, current versions of ProGuard seem to expect the return parameter's type qualifier:

-assumenosideeffects class android.util.Log {
    public static int   d(...);
    public static int   w(...);
    public static int   v(...);
    public static int   i(...);
    public static int wtf(...);
}

In app build.gradle file set:

release {
    minifyEnabled true
     ……
}

In proguard-rules.pro put:

-assumenosideeffects class android.util.Log {
  public static *** v(...);
  public static *** d(...);
  public static *** i(...);
  public static *** w(...);
  public static *** e(...);
}
-ignorewarnings

It worked for me.

You can put debuggable false on buildTypes release.

buildTypes {

     release {
        debuggable false
        ...
     }

}

I usually do next:

if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) Log.i(TAG, msg);

though if you have a lot of dependencies (libraries) and they written bad then yeah just use https://stackoverflow.com/a/5553290/4548520

making lines shorter:

private final static boolean DEBUG = BuildConfig.DEBUG;

if (DEBUG) Log.i(TAG, msg_1);

if (DEBUG) Log.e(TAG, msg_error_2);

I combined David Snabel-Caunt's accepted answer in addition to swapping out the default ProGuard settings ("proguard-android.txt" file) from the Android SDK for the "proguard-android-optimize.txt" optimized file. The file is also available in this Android SDK folder with the same rules but with optimizations enabled.

Instead of enumerating all the class's methods it looks like you can also simply use the <methods> shorthand :

-assumenosideeffects class a.b.c.DebugLogs {
    <methods>;
}

Worked for me with com.android.tools.build:gradle version 4.0.0.