Compatibility

AppInspect is meant to drop into an app that already exists, without changing how that app is built. No Compose, no Kotlin, no dependency injection, no Application subclass and no manifest edits are required. This page is the honest list of what it does need, and what quietly does less on older devices.

What it needs from your project

You do not need Compose

The inspector's screens are Compose, but that is an implementation detail of the library, already compiled into the AAR you resolve. A View and XML app, a Fragment-based app, or an app with buildFeatures { compose = false } gets the full inspector unchanged: you never enable the Compose compiler, never set composeOptions, and never write a composable.

The only thing Compose availability changes is which long-press trigger helper you can use. Every other entry point — shake, launcher shortcut, notification tap, AppInspect.open(context) — is the same either way.

The trade-off is APK size, and only in the variants AppInspect ships in: a non-Compose app picks up the Compose runtime, Foundation, Material 3 and the extended icon set transitively. That lands in your debug and staging builds, never in release when you use the no-op artifact.

Java-only hosts

Everything works. AppInspect is a Kotlin object, so the calls go through INSTANCE, and the Kotlin extension on the OkHttp builder is not available — add the two interceptors directly instead, in this order.

AppInspect.INSTANCE.open(context);
AppInspect.INSTANCE.registerMetadata("tenant", "internal");

// Application interceptor first, network interceptor second
new OkHttpClient.Builder()
    .addInterceptor(new AppInspectOkHttpInterceptor())
    .addNetworkInterceptor(new AppInspectOkHttpWireHeaderInterceptor())
    .build();

The second interceptor is what makes captured events carry the final wire headers. Omit it and the panel shows the request as your code built it, not as it was sent. addAppInspectInterceptor() installs both for Kotlin callers.

Three optional integrations, and why they are optional

OkHttp, WorkManager and androidx.security-crypto are declared compileOnly. AppInspect therefore never forces a version onto your app and never adds a library you were not already using.

This matters more than it looks. Had these been ordinary implementation dependencies, adding AppInspect could have raised the OkHttp version your app resolves to — so the builds you test would run a different HTTP stack than release, and a networking bug could appear or disappear depending on whether the inspector was present. appinspect-no-op follows the same rule and declares no runtime dependency beyond the Kotlin standard library.

If you are still on OkHttp 3.x, upgrade to 4.x before adding network capture; the interceptor is compiled against the 4.x API. The other panels do not care either way.

What does less on older devices

Nothing here throws or logs an error. The feature is simply absent, and the rest of the inspector is unaffected.