Monitoring the Debug Information

The information on a debugging session is displayed in the dedicated tabs of the Debug tool window named after the selected run/debug configuration.

For each session, use the Console tab to view the debugger messages and application output, and the Debug tab to monitor threads and frames.

When displaying and modifying local variables or watches values, PhpStorm uses the Default Encoding setting for the current project or the IDE encoding if no encoding is specified at the project level. The same setting is used when showing the PHP console script output.

User-defined constants are grouped under a separate Constants node, which is by default collapsed. Once expanded or collapsed, the Constants node preserves this state across the debugging sessions. Note that if the number of user-defined constants is significant, the stepping performance might decrease. If necessary, you can disable fetching such constants during the debugging session by clicking on the Debug Tool Window toolbar. The Constants node will be hidden.