-**At compile time**: in menuconfig, set the verbosity level using the option :envvar:`CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL`. All logging statements for verbosity levels higher than :envvar:`CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL` will be removed by the preprocessor.
-**At runtime**: all logs for verbosity levels lower than :envvar:`CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL` are enabled by default. The function :cpp:func:`esp_log_level_set` can be used to set a logging level on a per module basis. Modules are identified by their tags, which are human-readable ASCII zero-terminated strings.
The function :cpp:func:`esp_log_level_set` cannot set logging levels higher than specified by :envvar:`CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL`. To increase log level for a specific file at compile time, use the macro `LOG_LOCAL_LEVEL` (see the details below).
Additionally, there are ``ESP_EARLY_LOGx`` versions for each of these macros, e.g., :c:macro:`ESP_EARLY_LOGE`. These versions have to be used explicitly in the early startup code only, before heap allocator and syscalls have been initialized. Normal ``ESP_LOGx`` macros can also be used while compiling the bootloader, but they will fall back to the same implementation as ``ESP_EARLY_LOGx`` macros.
By default, the logging library uses the vprintf-like function to write formatted output to the dedicated UART. By calling a simple API, all log output may be routed to JTAG instead, making logging several times faster. For details, please refer to Section :ref:`app_trace-logging-to-host`.