How to determine which app is causing vibration?

Question

I have a Moto G6 Play that vibrates like it is getting notifications but it's not. The vibration is inconsistent and seems random so I would like to know if there is a logcat or something I can run to log which app is calling the vibration so that I can shut it off? The same thing happens on my wife's phone, same model, and it does my head in. The device is running Android 9.

Answer 1

In addition to the dumpsys method explained in the other answer, you can use Android's hidden (kind of) permission manager appops to get recently allowed vibrator requests, e.g. in last minute. From adb shell:

for pkg in $(pm list packages | sed 's/package://')
do
    echo "$pkg $(appops get $pkg VIBRATE)" | grep 'time=+[0-9]*s'
done

pm is the package manager which lists all installed packages. appops determines when last time each package made a vibration request and if it was allowed or rejected.

Result can be further filtered by piping output through awk '{printf "%-12s%-20s%s\n",$3,$4,$1}':

allow;      time=+15s659ms      com.termux
allow;      time=+6s458ms       com.google.android.inputmethod.latin

Termux made a vibration 15 seconds back. Also the request can be denied:

~$ appops set com.termux VIBRATE deny

Now the output will be like this:

deny;       time=+9s500ms       com.termux
allow;      time=+6s392ms       com.google.android.inputmethod.latin

And a shameless self-promotion. If not comfortable with CLI, you can use my open-source app Permission Manager X to get and set AppOps:

Answer 2

The next time your device vibrates, connect it to a PC with adb already setup, and issue this command:

adb shell dumpsys vibrator

In the output, along with the pattern of vibration you would be able to see the UID and package name of the app that caused the vibration in the device recently. For example, in my OnePlus 6 (Android 8.1.0) device it showed this output:

Previous vibrations:
  , startTime: 95325556, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 250], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 5, uid: 10122, opPkg: com.textra
  , startTime: 95346005, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 250], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 5, uid: 10122, opPkg: com.textra
  , startTime: 95428005, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 250], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 5, uid: 10122, opPkg: com.textra
  , startTime: 95516412, effect: OneShot{mTiming=50, mAmplitude=-1}, usageHint: 0, uid: 1001, opPkg: com.android.incallui
  , startTime: 95572994, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 250], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 5, uid: 10122, opPkg: com.textra
  , startTime: 96868723, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 250], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 0, uid: 1000, opPkg: android
  , startTime: 97144598, effect: OneShot{mTiming=200, mAmplitude=-1}, usageHint: 0, uid: 10130, opPkg: com.phonepe.app
  , startTime: 97187986, effect: OneShot{mTiming=200, mAmplitude=-1}, usageHint: 0, uid: 10130, opPkg: com.phonepe.app
  , startTime: 98229901, effect: Waveform{mTimings=[0, 300], mAmplitudes=[0, -1], mRepeat=-1}, usageHint: 0, uid: 10133, opPkg: com.arlosoft.macrodroid

The string next to opPkg: is the package name of the app that caused the vibration at a certain time. The list is in chronological order with the most recent entry at the bottom. To get the app's name out of the package name, see my answer here.