How to Get Your MTG Arena Player.log File

Last updated on July 22, 2022

MTG Arena's Player.log file is an MTGA file often used for debugging and troubleshooting issues with MTG Arena. It's also used by third party apps, like Draftsim's own amazing tracker, Arena Tutor.

Here's how you can find your Player.log file and what you can use it for.

How to Find Your Player.log File

For as critical as the file is, Player.log is rather difficult to find.

Windows Method 1: Use File Explorer or This PC

1. First, open the file explorer in Windows:

2. Click on the address bar and type %appdata%/../LocalLow\Wizards Of The Coast\MTGA

The folder for MTGA's logs will be loaded.

3. Find the file named Player.log and copy it

Windows Method 2: Use Run on the Start Menu

1. Open your Windows Start Menu

2. Type in run and click on Run

3. Type %appdata%/../LocalLow\Wizards Of The Coast\MTGA and hit enter

4. Find the file named Player.log and copy it

On Mac OS

1. Open Finder to browse your files

2. Navigate to Users → [Your Mac’s name] → Library → Logs → DiagnosticReports

3. Grab the latest .crash files to use for crash reports

What Is Player-prev.log?

Player-prev.log is just your last Player.log file. A new Player.log file is generated whenever you close MTGA, so Player-prev.log is the last version of Player.log before that.

This is useful if you need the data from your previous session of MTGA before the last one. Hence the name!

What About output_log.txt?

output_log.txt is the old MTGA log file. This was used for debugging prior to an MTGA update years ago.

Note the last modified date on this — if you have the file, it hasn't been updated in quite awhile. It isn't used for anything anymore because it doesn't record the latest data in Arena.

What Is Player.log Used For?

In MTGA

When you submit a bug report in MTG Arena, there is an option to include this file. I highly recommend you do upload your Player.log file because it will give the customer service rep (and technical team) a lot more information for understanding your issue.

You can think of this as the “proof” or “smoking gun” that the issue happened. As much as you can try and recall or describe the step-by-step of what happened, the log has all the necessary technical details and forensic evidence about what went wrong.

Hauken's Insight by Aurore-Folny

Personally, I think you'll have a lot higher likelihood of getting a refund from WotC if you include this type of evidence.

Beyond enabling Wizards of the Coast's support team, their developers use this file for their own troubleshooting purposes. But the funny thing is, the existence of this file has also created an entire ecosystem of MTGA assistant apps.

Unlike many other game publishers, Wizards does not provide an API for their game or any kind of developer toolkit. All you get is this file.

But there is actually a lot you can do with this single file.

For MTG Arena Addons And Trackers

For Arena Tutor, this file is usually the first thing I ask for when a user reports a problem to us. It allows us to re-run and re-parse a user's files in order to reproduce and fix the bug.

But the real power comes from enabling detailed logs/plugin support in your MTGA settings. This allows us to read a slew of information from the game. It enables our app to give you:

• Your MTG Arena stats
• Your win rate
• Your draft history and draft recommendations
• Detailed game logs
• Your vault progress
• And much, much more

Virtually everything in Arena Tutor (and anyone else's app) is dependent on this file to get the necessary information from the game.

Visualization of your decks in Arena Tutor

Don't Have Arena Tutor Yet? Try it Now

We're constantly updating the app and adding awesome new features to it. If you've never tried it, or if you had it a couple years ago but don't anymore, you definitely should download it and check it out now. You'll love it.

We've got a ton of awesome features that other apps don't have like a full game log for every game and postgame achievements, which are really fun! Oh plus an awesome draft AI that guides your picks and deckbuilding decisions.