Is there a Spy++ like utility for WPF?

Question

As a “hardcore” WinForms programmer from a Win32 background I have always used Spy++ to understand what my applications are doing at the UI level including:

• Seeing what events the controls are sending to each other.
• Seeing the control tree at run time
• Finding the control that is drawing part of the display

I then often search for the control name in the source code, very useful when you have to change the UI on a large application you don’t know well.

So how do I do the same with a WPF application?

(You may assume I have access to the source code of the WPF application if needed, however I rather the utility worked without the need for the applications source code.)

---

Thanks for the answers, I have just searched for “Snoop” in StackOverflow and found a few questions/answers with lists of WPF tools.

• What tools do you use for WPF development
• Tools to develop WPF or Silverlight applications
• How to speed up WPF programs? - has a list of related tools

Answer 1

Yes, you can use Snoop. It is exactly like Spy++ for WPF.

Answer 2

Note: Present post is based on Web Archive, and the original page is not currently available as of 2018/07/12!

I prefer Snoop, but also wanted to point out Mole, which is a Visual Studio debugger visualizer for WPF elements: