Laravel Telescope is a powerful debugging tool that improves development efficiency by monitoring the internal operations of applications in real time. When installing, use the commands composer require laravel/telescope and php artisan telescope:install and run the migration to complete the configuration; by default, it is only enabled in the local environment, and the environment restrictions can be adjusted in TelescopeServiceProvider, or the data record range can be customized in config/telescope.php. Its core functions include: 1. Real-time monitoring of requests and exceptions, displaying routing, input data, sessions, response status, etc., and automatically record exception information to facilitate troubleshooting; 2. Query performance analysis, displaying all SQL queries and execution time, identifying duplicate or time-consuming queries, and helping to optimize database operations; 3. Monitor tasks, events and emails, viewing event triggering, job dispatch status, and email content, and debugging email content without actual sending. These features make Laravel Telescope an indispensable aid in the development process.

When you're building or maintaining a Laravel app, having insight into what's going on under the hood can save you hours of debugging. That's where Laravel Telescope comes in — it's a powerful tool for monitoring and debugging your application in real time.

Here are some practical ways to make the most out of Laravel Telescope during development and debugging.

Installing and Enabling Laravel Telescope

Before you can use Telescope, you need to install it via Composer:

 composer requires laravel/telescope

Then run the installation command:

 php artisan telescope:install

This creates a TelescopeServiceProvider and publishes all necessary configuration files and migrations. Run your migrations with:

 php artisan migrate

By default, Telescope is only available in the local environment. If you want to enable it in other environments (not recommended for production), update the gate() method inside the App\Providers\TelescopeServiceProvider .

You can also fine-tune which data gets recorded by editing the watchers array in config/telescope.php . For example, disable logging of Redis commands if you don't need them.

Monitoring Requests and Exceptions in Real Time

One of the most useful features of Telescope is its ability to log every incoming request along with detailed information about what happened during that request.

• Each entry includes the route called, input data, session contents, cookies, response status, and more.
• It also logs any exceptions thrown during the request lifecycle, making it easy to spot errors without digging through logs manually.

If you're troubleshooting a 500 error or trying to understand why a specific request isn't behaving as expected, just open up Telescope, find the relevant request, and inspect the timeline and exception tab.

Use this feature to:

• See exactly what input was sent to a controller
• Track down unhandled exceptions or model not found errors
• Check how long each part of the request took to execute

Debugging Queries and Performance Bottlenecks

The Queries tab in Telescope shows every SQL query executed during a request, including execution time and bindings.

This helps you identify:

• Duplicate queries (especially helpful when dealing with N 1 issues)
• Long-running queries that might need indexing
• Raw SQL statements with parameter values ??already substituted

For example, if you see a query repeated multiple times within one request, it could mean you're looping over a relationship without eager loading it first. Telescope makes spotting these kinds of performance issues much easier than scanning through log files.

You can also toggle between "Slow" and "All" queries to focus on those taking longer than a specified threshold (default is 100ms).

Watching Jobs, Events, and Mail in Development

While developing features like email notifications or background job processing, it's often hard to know what's actually being triggered behind the scenes.

Telescope gives you visibility into:

• Which events were fired and who listened to them
• What jobs were dispatched and whether they succeeded
• Full details of mailables, including rendered views and recipient info

This means you can:

• Confirm event listeners are working without sending real emails
• See the payload passed to queued jobs before they run
• Debug mail content directly in Telescope instead of using tools like Mailtrap during local testing

Just keep in mind, this kind of data should never be exposed in production. Telescope is meant for development use, so always ensure it's properly gated in non-local environments.

That's basically it. Laravel Telescope doesn't replace traditional debugging tools like Xdebug or logging, but it adds a layer of real-time visibility that makes everyday development tasks faster and less error-prone. It's especially handy when you're deep in the weeds and need to quickly understand what's happening across requests, queries, and background processes.

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