Live Debugger

• Latest Dynatrace
• App
• 8-min read
• Updated on Dec 01, 2025

Live Debugger is a cloud native, live data collection app that gives you instant access to the code-level data you need to troubleshoot and debug quickly in any environment, from development to production.

Prerequisites

Get started

Activate the Live Debugger feature

To activate the Live Debugger feature

Enable Observability for Developers

To use Live Debugger, you need to opt-in to Observability for Developers. You can enable it for specific process groups, Kubernetes namespaces, clusters, or the entire environment.

Environment level

1. Go to Settings > Collect and capture > Observability for Developers > Enable Observability for Developers.
2. Turn on Enable Observability for Developers.

Process group level

1. Go to Technologies & Processes Classic.
2. Select the category and then the required process group.
3. On the process group overview page, select Settings.
4. Go to Observability for Developers > Enable Observability for Developers.
5. Turn on Enable Observability for Developers.

Kubernetes namespaces and clusters level

1. Go to Kubernetes.
2. Select the required namespace or cluster.
3. In the upper-right corner, select > Connection settings or, if not available, Anomaly detection settings.
4. Close the Kubernetes namespace anomaly detection or Connection settings overlay. You should see the namespace or cluster settings page.
5. Go to Collect and capture > Observability for Developers > Enable Observability for Developers.
6. Turn on Enable Observability for Developers.

Enable Live Debugging in ActiveGate

ActiveGate version 1.311+

An ActiveGate isn't strictly required for Live Debugger to work, but it significantly streamlines the process, especially in Kubernetes environments. It allows you to reduce your interaction with Dynatrace to one single point, which is available locally. Besides convenience, this solution optimizes traffic volume and reduces the complexity of the network and cost.

Host-based deployments

The Live Debugger module is enabled by default for host-based ActiveGate deployments starting from ActiveGate version 1.311.

Kubernetes Operator deployments

For Kubernetes Operator deployments, enable the Live Debugger module via the ActiveGate capabilities section in the DynaKube configuration.

To enable the Live Debugger module

If you're using a proxy, configure it within the Environment ActiveGate as described in Proxy for ActiveGate.

Start live debugging an application

To start a live debugging session

Fetch source code

Each debug session must contain the application source code you're about to debug. Live Debugger lets you quickly load sources from your local file system and various Git providers. When you integrate your source code into Live Debugger, it remains between your code repository and your local browser.

There are two main ways to import your source code:

Automatic fetching

Live Debugger can connect to a repository and automatically fetch the source code for the selected instance.

Your repository can be automatically fetched for the selected instance based on your Git permissions if your admin has already set it up.

To learn more about automatic fetching, see Integrate with your version control.

Manual fetching

Live Debugger lets you easily load your relevant source code into the application. Select under Source Code to open a list of the supported Git providers from which you can fetch sources.

Git on-premises integration

Live Debugger integrates directly with the cloud editions of the following Git providers, both on-premises and SaaS:

To enable Live Debugger to integrate with your on-premises or locally hosted Git provider

Local file system

Live Debugger includes a desktop application (Dynatrace Desktop app) that can access source repositories from your local file system. This allows you to fetch source code from locally hosted Git providers.

Place a non-breaking breakpoint

To get real-time code-level data

Non-breaking breakpoints are reference breakpoints for the lines of code from which you want to collect debug data. These breakpoints don't stop your code from running. Instead, they carry the debug data collection request. Placing these breakpoints and receiving the derived snapshots don't affect your application or its users.

After placing a non-breaking breakpoint, ensure your code has been triggered so that the data is collected and appears immediately in Live Debugger.

See the debug data

Once the non-breaking breakpoint is triggered, the collected data is displayed in the Snapshots Pane at the bottom of Live Debugger.

Select the required snapshot to view the following information:

You can also debug code up the stack from the stack trace view, including third-party components.

Concepts

Application Observability

The inability to access code-level data on demand is a challenge that most developers face when troubleshooting and debugging application issues. Instead, they have to go through long deployment cycles and investigation of logs to find the relevant data they need to understand what's going on in their running code.

Live Debugger

Live Debugger is a cloud native debugging and live data collection solution that gives instant access to the code-level debug data you need to troubleshoot and understand complex, modern applications with no extra coding, redeployments, or restarts.

You can use Live Debugger in any environment, from development to production, and at any time, to instantly access the real-time data needed to get to the root cause of issues faster.

Dynamic logging

Developer teams often try to log as much as possible, as they're often not sure what data will be needed to debug an issue. This generates many unneeded logs and horrid signal-to-noise ratios.

By shifting their logging mindset to Live Debugging, teams can reduce logging costs and, most importantly, the heavy effort required to support intense logging pipelines and cleanups.

Development collaboration

Collected debug data can be shared among team members when debugging application issues. This allows team members to have their own view of collected debug data and share that data with other team members for improved collaboration.

As a result, Live Debugger can become a single source of truth, the go-to place for developers to see reality as it is and collaborate on it.

On-demand trace inspection

Live Debugger collects an object representation of traces used by your application. Developers can then correlate captured debug data with tracing data from your application.

Dev training and onboarding

Understanding new code can be challenging. It's twice as tricky when it's legacy code or, as often occurs, code written by someone else.

Live Debugger lets developers speed up their learning process by allowing them to observe unfamiliar code running in its native environment.

Use cases

Capture real-time debug data

Troubleshoot faster

Dev-friendly debugging experience

Test and optimize your code faster