SwingSpy

SwingSpy is a Swing introspector that runs in the background of your application. It shows a hierarchy of dialog's elements under the cursor, which may be useful during development or debugging the Swing UI.

Usage

Add SwingSpy jar to classpath and somewhere at the startup of your Swing application add the following code:

    try {
        Class.forName("jodd.swingspy.SwingSpy").getMethod("install").invoke(null);
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        System.err.println("SwingSpy is not installed... " + ex.toString());
    }

Once installed, SwingSpy may be invoked by pressing the hot-key combination: ctrl+shift+click anytime during the runtime of your application. When activated, SwingSpy shows a dialog with complete hierarchy of Swing components and some raw object's content on the right. Clicked component will be expanded in the hierarchy three.

While SwingSpy is active, user may hover the cursor over swing dialog and component under the cursor will be highlighted. During that time, cursor will be followed by the word Spy and the component under the mouse will be highlighted. By clicking the hotkey again over another component, SwingSpy will locate it in the hierarchy three.

SwingSpy may be exited by closing its dialog. It remains in the background until the next use.

Screenshots

SwingSpy in action over small dialog:

SwingSpy in action over real-world complex UI application:

Enjoy Swing!!!