When we published our Android app we decided to use Airbrake as a 3rd party exception reporting service. I integrated the loopj Airbrake notifier (https://github.com/loopj/airbrake-android) into our app and it seemed to be doing fairly well.
Over the past two weeks we have seen an explosion in downloads and as a result an increase in exceptions being reported. I was getting some really weird exceptions so I decided to look at the Android Developer Console for the application in Google Play. The interesting thing I found was that the number of errors in the Google Play dashboard was less than 10% of the total number I have in Airbrake. Then I decided to double check with Flurry. The number of exceptions that Flurry seems to have encountered is similar to what Airbrake is showing me, which leads me to believe that Flurry gathers these stats in the same way as Airbrake.
So what I want to know and cannot find any good answers to:
What is Google / Android doing differently than a normal uncaught exception handler?
Should I just throw Airbrake out and use the Google Play error reporting only? (Our app does go back to 2.1, but we can live with that)
What is Google / Android doing differently than a normal uncaught exception handler?
Among other things, they only log the exception to the server if the user clicks the "Report..." button, AFAIK. Since many users will not do that, you will get a subset of the actual exceptions that occur.
Related
In my Android app, I'm handling some exceptions so as not to crash the app on runtime, and to allow the user to have some (limited) functionality of the app.
However, I want to be able to view the logs of any handled exceptions on the apps of my users.
I've already looked at a few answers on different ways of doing this (such as this one).
I've found out about:
Google Analytics
Splunk Mint
Fabric
They all seem very similar, so before I jump in and start implementing one of these solutions, my question is: what are the advantages and disadvantages of these tools?
For example, how does Fabric compare to Google Analytics?
I just received reports from some of my users who's running Lollipop, they're saying that my app would crash (with the message: App Stop Working) if they tried to launch it by clicking on my app's icon on their home screen. But if they launch my app from Google Play Store, the app would work without any problem.
What could be the cause of this? If it's any help, here's my app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imincode.meniti
Btw there's no mention of any Crashes/ANR in my Google Play Developer Console.
The issue is you need to get the stack trace. Google Developer console is not sufficient in tracking bugs in your app. It misses the vast majority of in app crashes. I think there are a few options here.
1) I would try replicating this with the emulator and see if you can get the stack trace there.
2) I would embed a high quality crash tracking library in your application to be able to better handle this in the future. Currently I would recommend using Crashlytics. In my opinion they have the best crash reporting library on the market today. ACRA was very good several years ago before professional products came out, but does not hold up compared to modern trackers like Crashlytics.
I have been testing my application with my relatives through distribution via Google Play's alpha testing feature. Crashes have been showing under "Crashes & ANRS" for a while. However, there have been many crashes in the past few days but none have shown up on this page at all. I have spoken with them and they have assured me that there have been crashes and that they have been reporting them and sending them off to Google.
Does anyone know why the Crashes & ANRS page on the Google Play Developer Console doesn't pick up these crash reports anymore? I haven't contacted Google about this yet but I will do so now as well.
edit:
Okay so I just checked today and all of the crash reports have just shown up. I guess it can take up to a day or so for the reports to show up.
It was just a case of not being patient enough.
Okay so I just checked today and all of the crash reports have just shown up. I guess it can take up to a day or so for the reports to show up.
It was just a case of not being patient enough.
I can recommend you use Crittercism. Then you will have actionable crash reports immediately, both in release and during development if you so wish.
You can also know with some confidence whether your app is actually stable or not, and prioritise what you need to fix.
So, there are two points here:
1) It depends on the user's decision to 'Send Report' (or not) on any crash perceived during app usage. To check all of the stack traces generated by your application, you must implement third-party crash reporter or start testing Firebase Crash Reporting (https://firebase.google.com/docs/crash).
2) In my experience using the Google Play console, a reported crash/ANR may take some hours to reach your dashboard.
I have an App available in the Android Market.
From time to time i get error reports in the Developer Console. For about 6 month there have been no more stack-traces visible. At first I though no more post-froyo bugs: 'yay'!
Recently I did some testing using a droid 2 which I am sure is not pre-froyo, I ran into an error, reported it, and never received this report in the Console.
Did I miss some configuration or option that enables me to receive stacktraces?
Is there something I can do about it?
I have no idea why you don't receive stack traces anymore nor how could you enable them. I have always felt Android Market is a somewhat unreliable service: reports are not accurate, downloads/active counts randomly change at times, crash reports not received, and so on.
However, I have suggestions how to implement similar functionality yourself and with a more reliable fashion: How do I obtain crash-data from my Android application?
Basically there are two options:
Use an existing component (like acra)
DIY by catching all uncaught exceptions.
(So you would have an option should you fail to receive a real solution)
I'd suggest you to stop listening to android market and work with other tools.
You should consider using a crash report tool like http://www.bugsense.com/ which is simple effective and meaningful
NOTE: i am not linked nor affiliated in any way with bugsense owners. I am just a simple user.
I posted a free app and I've got a couple users who posted a comment saying that the app force closes in google's feedback. It's got a few hundred downloads in the day it's been up with an 84% retention rate. Google's error report in the developer's console says it has 0 errors. I've never had an app that reported any errors in the console. Does it actually work or am I getting fake reports of force closes? I'm a bit suspicious competitors might be posting the comments, but I don't have any way to confirm that the error reporting google provides does actually work.
As far as I know, the 'Report' button is only available on devices running FroYo (2.2) or later, which is very few.
At least I've never seen the ability to report an error upon force close.
I don't think there's any reason to assume your users are lying to you. But it's always a good idea to include something in your app that'll allow for the users to submit an error from within the application.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/ddf6863e9a31052f?pli=1
you could use this project http://code.google.com/p/android-remote-stacktrace/ to verify