Weave Code
Telescope Laravel Package
laravel/telescope
Laravel Telescope is an elegant debug assistant for Laravel, giving you insight into requests, exceptions, logs, database queries, queued jobs, mail, notifications, cache operations, scheduled tasks, and variable dumps. A perfect companion for local development.
An elegant debug assistant for the Laravel framework.
Frequently asked questions about Telescope
- What is Laravel Telescope used for?
- Laravel Telescope is a first-party debug assistant that records and displays what happens inside a Laravel application: incoming requests, exceptions, logs, database queries, queued jobs, mail, notifications, cache operations, scheduled tasks, and variable dumps. It is intended mainly as a local development companion and helps you inspect application behavior from a central dashboard. It is not a replacement for production monitoring tools such as Sentry or Datadog, though it can complement them in controlled staging environments. For lighter-weight local debugging, developers sometimes use Laravel Debugbar or Ray instead.
- How do I install Laravel Telescope?
- Install it with Composer by running composer require laravel/telescope --dev, then run php artisan telescope:install and php artisan migrate. The install command publishes Telescope's configuration and assets and registers the service provider. After migrating, the /telescope dashboard is available in your local environment. Prebuilt assets ship with releases, so Node.js is not required unless you customize the frontend.
- Which Laravel versions does Laravel Telescope support?
- As of v5.25.0, Telescope requires Laravel 10 or newer. If you are on Laravel 9 or older, you may need an older Telescope release or manual adjustments. Always check the package constraints in composer.json and the official upgrade guide before updating a legacy application.
- Is Laravel Telescope safe for production use?
- Telescope is not recommended for production by the Laravel documentation because it records sensitive request data and can add storage and processing overhead. If you enable it in staging, restrict access, configure retention, and disable watchers you do not need. For production observability, prefer dedicated monitoring and logging services.
- How do I secure the Telescope dashboard and mask sensitive data?
- Telescope's dashboard is protected by a gate defined in TelescopeServiceProvider, and you should customize that authorization callback for your application's authentication model. Use Telescope's built-in filtering and redaction options, such as hidden request parameters, to hide sensitive fields, and review headers, payloads, and query bindings that might contain PII. For non-web auth guards, such as API tokens, verify the gate checks the correct guard and consider additional middleware or network restrictions.
- Does Laravel Telescope add performance overhead?
- Telescope adds overhead because it listens to framework events and writes entries to the database for each watched request, query, job, and other event. In local development the overhead is usually acceptable, but high-traffic staging or production use can increase latency and database load. Disable unnecessary watchers and avoid enabling Telescope on every request in performance-sensitive environments.
- How do I prevent the telescope_entries table from growing too large?
- Telescope stores entries in the telescope_entries table, which can grow quickly if retention is not configured. Use php artisan telescope:prune on a schedule, and configure the prune schedule or retention window in config/telescope.php. You can also run telescope:clear during development and archive or truncate the table if it becomes large.
- How do I enable or disable specific Telescope watchers?
- Telescope's watchers are configured in config/telescope.php under the watchers array. You can enable or disable individual watchers such as RequestWatcher, QueryWatcher, JobWatcher, and LogWatcher, or conditionally register them based on the environment. This lets you keep useful instrumentation in staging while avoiding noisy or expensive watchers.
- Does Laravel Telescope affect automated tests?
- Telescope can record entries during automated tests if it is enabled, which may slow tests and pollute the telescope_entries table. Many teams disable Telescope in the testing environment, for example by setting TELESCOPE_ENABLED=false in phpunit.xml or the test environment config. If you need to assert Telescope-specific behavior, use its documented testing APIs rather than relying on the dashboard.
- What changed in Laravel Telescope v5.25.0 for telescope:list?
- In v5.25.0, the telescope:list Artisan command gained an opt-in --full option to display untruncated UUIDs for entries. Default output is unchanged, so existing scripts and parsers are not affected. The release is CLI-only, with no schema, configuration, or runtime instrumentation changes.
Weaver
How can I help you explore Laravel packages today?