Logging

The SDK uses spdlog internally but does not expose it in public headers. All log output goes through a thin public API in <livekit/logging.h>.

Two-tier filtering

Tier	When	How	Cost
Compile-time	CMake configure	-DLIVEKIT_LOG_LEVEL=WARN	Zero — calls below the level are stripped from the binary
Runtime	Any time after initialize()	livekit::setLogLevel(LogLevel::Warn)	Minimal — a level check before formatting

Compile-time level (<tt>LIVEKIT_LOG_LEVEL</tt>)

Set once when you configure CMake. Calls below this threshold are completely removed by the preprocessor — no format-string evaluation, no function call.

# Development (default): keep everything available
cmake -DLIVEKIT_LOG_LEVEL=TRACE ..
 
# Release: strip TRACE / DEBUG / INFO
cmake -DLIVEKIT_LOG_LEVEL=WARN ..
 
# Production: only ERROR and CRITICAL survive
cmake -DLIVEKIT_LOG_LEVEL=ERROR ..

Valid values: TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, CRITICAL, OFF.

Runtime level (<tt>setLogLevel</tt>)

Among the levels that survived compilation you can still filter at runtime without rebuilding:

#include <livekit/livekit.h>
 
livekit::initialize();                           // default level: Info
livekit::setLogLevel(livekit::LogLevel::Debug);  // show more detail
livekit::setLogLevel(livekit::LogLevel::Warn);   // suppress info chatter

Custom log callback

Replace the default stderr sink with your own handler. This is the integration point for frameworks like ROS2 (RCLCPP_* macros), Android logcat, or any structured-logging pipeline:

#include <livekit/livekit.h>
 
livekit::initialize();
livekit::setLogLevel(livekit::LogLevel::Trace);
 
livekit::setLogCallback(
    [](livekit::LogLevel level,
       const std::string &logger_name,
       const std::string &message) {
      // Route to your framework, e.g.:
      //   RCLCPP_INFO(get_logger(), "[%s] %s", logger_name.c_str(), message.c_str());
      myLogger.log(level, logger_name, message);
    });
 
// Pass nullptr to restore the default stderr sink:
livekit::setLogCallback(nullptr);

See the logging_levels/custom_sinks.cpp example for three copy-paste-ready patterns: a file logger, JSON structured lines, and a ROS2 bridge that maps LogLevel to RCLCPP_* macros.

Available log levels

Level	Typical use
Trace	Per-frame / per-packet detail (very noisy)
Debug	Diagnostic info useful during development
Info	Normal operational messages (connection, track events)
Warn	Unexpected but recoverable situations
Error	Failures that affect functionality
Critical	Unrecoverable errors
Off	Suppress all output