This is the eighth article in the Perfetto series, providing an in-depth introduction to the Vsync mechanism in Android and its representation in Perfetto. The article will analyze how the Android system performs frame rendering and composition based on Vsync signals from Perfetto’s perspective, covering core concepts such as Vsync, Vsync-app, Vsync-sf, and VsyncWorkDuration.
With the popularization of high refresh rate screens, understanding the Vsync mechanism has become increasingly important. This article uses 120Hz refresh rate as the main narrative thread to help developers understand the working principles of Vsync in modern Android devices, and how to observe and analyze Vsync-related performance issues in Perfetto.
Note: This article is based on Android 16’s latest architecture and implementation