Behind the Scenes with App High quality Insights

Posted by Rebecca Gutteridge, Senior Developer Relations Engineer

Hey there! I’m Rebecca Gutteridge, Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google. As somebody who has been working carefully with builders to know how we will make the Android platform higher, I’m keen about serving to builders enhance their app high quality to create wonderful experiences for customers. In 2022 we introduced Android Studio’s App High quality Insights (AQI) window which permits builders to find, examine, and reproduce points reported by Firebase Crashlytics, instantly inside the context of your native Android Studio undertaking. This can be a large step in how Android builders can enhance their app stability, and I needed to study extra concerning the evolution of how cell builders have managed crashes all through the years. You possibly can watch the behind the Scenes video on AQI right here, and inside the newest episode of #TheAndroidShow.

Early Days of Crash Administration

I first chatted with Annyce Davis, VP of Engineering at Meetup and Android GDE. She has been within the cell growth house since 2010 and had a variety of arms on expertise serving to debug person experiences.

“Within the early days, builders cared deeply about person crashes, however they didn’t have the instruments to duplicate or debug the difficulty, or to know which customers have been being impacted. I keep in mind spending a lot of time making an attempt to breed points based mostly on minimal info from bug studies.

One time I keep in mind making an attempt to debug an expertise solely occurring in a particular nation, and regardless of what number of instances I attempted, I used to be unable to breed it. It wasn’t till I traveled there in individual, I spotted folks have been usually utilizing 2G. It by no means dawned on me to verify the connection sort!” -Annyce Davis

Firebase Crashlytics Modifications the Sport

Crashlytics was launched in 2011 and it has helped builders observe, prioritize, and repair app crashes quicker. Annyce advised me this was a sport changer for crash administration.

“We might now know which gadgets have been experiencing points, might be notified of trending points, and eventually we have been in a position to present non-technical stakeholders crashes visually, to create buy-in for pressing work.

My group acquired crash studies for a selected display of the Meetup app, however we might by no means reproduce the difficulty given how inconsistent it was. First, Crashlytics helped us slender down which function to look at. We discovered a crash that was resulting from a null pointer exception on information that we by no means anticipated to be null, so it didn’t look like the crash might even be attainable! An engineer on my group was ready to make use of this information from Crashlytics to uncover that the supply was a race situation that may result in the null, after which he was in a position to repair it.” -Annyce Davis

What a difficult bug, how fascinating!

Behind the Scenes of AQI

I needed to study extra concerning the concept behind AQI, so I chatted with David Motsonashvili, a software program engineer on the Firebase group who labored on the preliminary prototype.

“The unique concept for the combination got here from a quarterly Hackweek, the place we have been in a position to experiment on our personal tasks. We all know Android builders use each Firebase console and Android Studio, so I had an concept to combine Firebase into Android Studio to cut back their want to change between the 2.

The primary prototype for this undertaking was really an integration with Firebase Efficiency Monitoring and Android Studio, however we realized Crashlytics would have a a lot larger impression on developer workflow as an integration in Android Studio, so we pivoted in that route as a substitute, and the remaining is historical past!” -David Motsonashvili

I cherished that the thought got here from wanting to assist builders and make our instruments simpler for them to make use of! I requested David if he had any enjoyable tales concerning the undertaking.

“We needed to be actually scrappy about displaying our take a look at app’s Crashlytics crash information within the IDE due to limitations we had with the API. It was a very enjoyable undertaking to determine tips on how to work round this throughout Hackweek!” -David Motsonashvili

I needed to higher perceive how AQI advanced from being an concept throughout Hackweek, to the place it’s as we speak.

“As soon as we launched the early developer preview we examined this with just a few inner Google groups, they usually cherished it! We additionally began testing this with Android builders as a part of an early entry program. A number of the corporations we talked to have been Adobe, Luno, and Meetup. They’d actually worthwhile suggestions that instantly contributed to the roadmap. One instance is after we discovered many groups wanted a spot to collaborate inside AQI, so we in fact moved ahead with including the Crashlytics notes function into AQI.” -David Motsonashvili

Fashionable Crash Administration

Annyce and her group have been early testers of AQI, and it was enjoyable to find out about what they considered the function.

“I used to be actually joyful to have the ability to go instantly from a hyperlink within the stacktrace to the code. It was the function in Android Studio that you just by no means knew you wanted! I particularly like you could filter points based mostly on the completely different variants in your app. Each engineer that I do know and work with is keen about delivering performant, high quality code. App High quality Insights is the following step within the evolution of crash administration, it could assist engineers have extra company over addressing crashes whereas additionally they work on thrilling new options.” -Annyce Davis

We’ve actually come a good distance with the instruments builders must handle bugs and crashes.

Get began with AQI

If you happen to’re able to strive AQI out for your self, obtain the newest model of Android Studio. You can too view the documentation, information on medium, and our demo video to study extra about tips on how to use it.