Android Perfetto Series Catalog

Word count: 1.1kReading time: 7 min

 2024/03/27

Perfetto has largely replaced the old Systrace workflow in my daily work. Android recommends Perfetto for Android 10 and later and describes the Systrace command-line tool as legacy. Developers new to Android performance analysis often find Perfetto’s interface and features complex, so this series revisits the subjects of my Systrace articles through Perfetto.

Technical review: 2026-10-14. The motivation below dates from the series launch in 2024; the catalog has since expanded. Practical examples mainly start with Android 12, which is not Perfetto’s minimum supported Android version. Check each article’s source tag, device version, and data-source requirements; historical examples are not all Android 17 measurements.

I used to think the Systrace series was enough. Here are the reasons I later shared on Knowledge Planet for writing a Perfetto series:

In my work around 2024, I saw teams at OPPO and vivo using Perfetto to capture and analyze traces, with many newcomers starting there. If I kept writing only about Systrace, I would miss those readers. This is a personal observation, not a survey of every team or its current tooling.
The Systrace series references older code. This series continues to add newer behavior; Android 17 (API 37) releases and source tags are available references. Each analysis still depends on its stated AOSP tag, device implementation, and trace. New API documentation is not proof of an older device’s implementation.
I haven’t fully mastered all of Perfetto’s high-level features myself. Re-writing this series helps me reinforce my own understanding.
I want to spend time on the Android and Linux behavior we can observe through Perfetto, not just on the tool’s buttons. What is the system doing, why is it doing that, and how does that explain the problem we are investigating?
Official Perfetto documentation still misses many nuances of Android system operation. I can fill in some of those gaps and explain them in Chinese.
If the series turns out well, I can also use it for a Google DevFest talk.

Paul Graham once said: “Either provide something most people want a little, or something a few people want a lot.“ Perfetto is exactly what a dedicated minority “wants a lot.” Let’s begin. Please feel free to share feedback or point out errors so I can keep this as accurate as possible.

In this series, I want to use Perfetto to look at how apps, the Framework, and Linux work together. If you have read plenty of source code and performance articles but still find the flow hard to follow, try placing that code on a trace timeline.

Perfetto Series Catalog

Systrace Series

Systrace is a legacy toolchain, but the old series’ Framework flows, thread states, Binder waits, Vsync, SurfaceFlinger, and CPU scheduling remain useful subjects, subject to each article’s version boundaries. From Android 10, the system tracing utility saves Perfetto-format traces. .perfetto-trace is a common extension for protobuf trace data; renaming a file does not convert its format. Perfetto UI and Trace Processor provide visualization, parsing, and SQL analysis. See the official system tracing overview for legacy HTML/ctrace support and conversion.

Perfetto continues to support android.os.Trace, NDK ATrace, and internal ATRACE instrumentation, while ftrace supplies kernel events. Data sources must be enabled in TraceConfig; visibility also depends on OS version, permissions, and device support. An absent event does not prove that the behavior never occurred: it may have been disabled, unsupported, or lost during recording.

If you are coming from the Systrace series, use this mapping:

Systrace topic	Perfetto content to read first
Tool introduction, capture flow, UI operations	Perfetto 1: Introduction, Perfetto 2: Capturing traces, Perfetto 3: Perfetto View
Why 60 fps and high refresh rate	Perfetto 6: Why 120Hz?
Choreographer, main thread, RenderThread, jank analysis	Perfetto 5: Choreographer rendering flow, Perfetto 7: MainThread and RenderThread
Vsync, SurfaceFlinger, Triple Buffer	Perfetto 8: Vsync and performance analysis
CPU frequency and Running/Runnable/Sleep states	Perfetto 9: CPU information
Binder, lock contention, and SystemServer waits	Perfetto 10: Binder scheduling and lock contention
Trace Processor, SQL, and batch regression	Perfetto 11: PerfettoSQL, Trace Processor, and Regression Detection
App instrumentation, Track Event, and field traces	Perfetto 13: Perfetto SDK, Track Event, and App Field Tracing
Boot traces and long-running field captures	Perfetto 15: Boot and Long-running Field Tracing
Input response and first-frame feedback	Perfetto 18: Input Response Latency

About Me & My Blog

Here is a quick introduction and relevant links. I welcome communication with fellow developers!

Author Introduction: Includes my WeChat and community links.
Blog Content Map: A navigation guide to this blog.
Android Performance Optimization Skills and Tools: A curated collection of excellent articles.
The Performance archive: The community closed in 2026 and no longer accepts new members.