flipper/docs/setup/layout-plugin.mdx

---
id: layout-plugin
title: Layout Inspector Setup
sidebar_label: Layout Inspector
---

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs';
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

To use the layout inspector plugin, you need to add the plugin to your Flipper client instance.

## Android

### Standard Android View Only

```java
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.DescriptorMapping;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.InspectorFlipperPlugin;

final DescriptorMapping descriptorMapping = DescriptorMapping.withDefaults();
client.addPlugin(new InspectorFlipperPlugin(mApplicationContext, descriptorMapping));
```

### With Litho Support

Litho support is provided via an optional plugin.

You also need to compile in the `litho-annotations` package, as Flipper reflects
on them at runtime. So ensure to not just include them as `compileOnly` in your
gradle configuration:

```groovy
dependencies {
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.flipper:flipper-litho-plugin:0.76.0'
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.litho:litho-annotations:0.19.0'
  // ...
}
```


If you want to enable Litho support in the layout inspector, you need to augment
the descriptor with Litho-specific settings and add some addition dependencies.

```java
import com.facebook.litho.config.ComponentsConfiguration;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.DescriptorMapping;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.InspectorFlipperPlugin;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.litho.LithoFlipperDescriptors;

// Instead of hard-coding this setting, it's a good practice to tie
// this to a BuildConfig flag, that you only enable for debug builds
// of your application.
ComponentsConfiguration.isDebugModeEnabled = true;

final DescriptorMapping descriptorMapping = DescriptorMapping.withDefaults();
// This adds Litho capabilities to the layout inspector.
LithoFlipperDescriptors.add(descriptorMapping);

client.addPlugin(new InspectorFlipperPlugin(mApplicationContext, descriptorMapping));
```

### Blocking fullscreen views (Android only)

The issue is that if you have some view that occupies big part of the screen but draws nothing and its Z-position is higher than your main content, then selecting view/component through Layout Inspector doesn't work as you intended, as it will always hit that transparent view and you need to manually navigate to the view you need which is time-consuming and should not be necessary.

Add the following tag to your view to skip it from Flipper's view picker. The view will still be shown in the layout hierarchy, but it will not be selected while using the view picker.

```java
view.setTag(R.id.flipper_skip_view_traversal, true);
```

### Blocking empty view groups (Android only)

If you have a ViewGroup that only occasionally has visible children, you may find it helpful to block its traversal when it is empty or has no visible children. For example, you might have a FragmentContainerView that currently has no visible fragment.

Add the following tag to your view group to skip it from Flipper's view picker only when it has zero children, or none of its children are currently visible. The views will still be shown in the layout hierarchy, but they will not be selected while using the view picker.

```java
viewGroup.setTag(R.id.flipper_skip_empty_view_group_traversal, true);
```

## iOS

### Standard UIView Only

To debug layout using Flipper, add the following pod:

```ruby
pod 'FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin', '~>' + flipperkit_version
```

Once you have added the pod, initialise the plugin and add it to the `FlipperClient` as follows.

<Tabs defaultValue="ios" values={[{ label: 'iOS', value: 'ios'}, { label: 'Swift', value: 'swift'}]}>
<TabItem value="ios">

```objective-c
#import <FlipperKitLayoutPlugin/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin.h>

SKDescriptorMapper *mapper = [[SKDescriptorMapper alloc] initWithDefaults];
[client addPlugin:[[FlipperKitLayoutPlugin alloc] initWithRootNode:context.application withDescriptorMapper:mapper]];
```

</TabItem>
<TabItem value="swift">

```swift
import FlipperKit

let layoutDescriptorMapper = SKDescriptorMapper(defaults: ())
client?.add(FlipperKitLayoutPlugin(rootNode: application, with: layoutDescriptorMapper!))
```

</TabItem>
</Tabs>

### With ComponentKit Support

If you want to enable [ComponentKit support](https://github.com/facebook/componentkit) in the layout inspector, you need to add `FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport` to your Podfile.

```ruby
pod 'FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport', '~>' + flipperkit_version
```   
Once you have added the pod you will then need to augment the descriptor with Componentkit-specific settings as shown below.

<Tabs defaultValue="ios" values={[{ label: 'iOS', value: 'ios'}, { label: 'Swift', value: 'swift'}]}>
<TabItem value="ios">

```objective-c
#import <FlipperKitLayoutPlugin/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin.h>
#import <FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport.h>

SKDescriptorMapper *layoutDescriptorMapper = [[SKDescriptorMapper alloc] initWithDefaults];
[FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport setUpWithDescriptorMapper: layoutDescriptorMapper];
[client addPlugin: [[FlipperKitLayoutPlugin alloc] initWithRootNode: application
                                           withDescriptorMapper: layoutDescriptorMapper]];
```

</TabItem>
<TabItem value="swift">

```swift
import FlipperKit

let layoutDescriptorMapper = SKDescriptorMapper(defaults: ())
FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport.setUpWith(layoutDescriptorMapper)

client?.add(FlipperKitLayoutPlugin(rootNode: application, with: layoutDescriptorMapper!))
```

</TabItem>
</Tabs>