Binder Transactions¶

Binder IPC transaction performance profiling.

Overview¶

Binder is Android's inter-process communication mechanism. Slow binder transactions can block the calling thread, causing ANRs and jank. perfetto-cli profiles binder calls to identify latency issues.

Commands¶

binder profile¶

Analyze binder transaction performance.

perfetto-cli -t trace.perfetto-trace -p com.example.app binder profile

Options:

Option	Description	Default
`--min-latency <ms>`	Minimum transaction latency to report	10
`--group-by <field>`	Group results by: `aidl`, `server`, `none`	none

Examples:

# Show only slow transactions (>20ms)
perfetto-cli -t trace.perfetto-trace -p com.example.app binder profile --min-latency 20

# Group by AIDL interface
perfetto-cli -t trace.perfetto-trace -p com.example.app binder profile --group-by aidl

# Group by server process
perfetto-cli -t trace.perfetto-trace -p com.example.app binder profile --group-by server

Workflow¶

Run binder profile to see all slow transactions
Use --group-by aidl to identify which interfaces are slowest
Cross-reference with cpu utilization on the server process to understand why

Tips¶

Binder calls on the main thread with >16ms latency will cause frame drops
Use --group-by server to identify slow system services
Combine with ANR analysis — binder timeouts are a common ANR cause