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 intently with builders to grasp how we are able to make the Android platform higher, I’m enthusiastic 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 allows builders to find, examine, and reproduce points reported by Firebase Crashlytics, straight inside the context of your native Android Studio mission. It is a massive step in how Android builders can enhance their app stability, and I wished to be taught extra in regards to the evolution of how cell builders have managed crashes all through the years. You’ll be able to 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 improvement area since 2010 and had lots of fingers 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 copy or debug the problem, or to grasp which customers have been being impacted. I bear in mind spending plenty of time attempting to breed points primarily based on minimal data from bug stories.

One time I bear in mind trying to debug an expertise solely taking place in a particular nation, and irrespective 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 noticed individuals have been typically utilizing 2G. It by no means dawned on me to examine the connection kind!” -Annyce Davis

Firebase Crashlytics Adjustments the Sport

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

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

My staff obtained crash stories for a specific display screen of the Meetup app, however we might by no means reproduce the problem given how inconsistent it was. First, Crashlytics helped us slim down which function to look at. We discovered a crash that was as a result of a null pointer exception on information that we by no means anticipated to be null, so it didn’t seem to be the crash might even be attainable! An engineer on my staff was ready to make use of this information from Crashlytics to uncover that the supply was a race situation that might result in the null, after which he was capable of repair it.” -Annyce Davis

What a tough bug, how fascinating!

Behind the Scenes of AQI

I wished to be taught extra in regards to the thought behind AQI, so I chatted with David Motsonashvili, a software program engineer on the Firebase staff who labored on the preliminary prototype.

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

The primary prototype for this mission was truly an integration with Firebase Efficiency Monitoring and Android Studio, however we realized Crashlytics would have a a lot larger influence on developer workflow as an integration in Android Studio, so we pivoted in that path as an alternative, and the remainder 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 in regards to the mission.

“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 extremely enjoyable mission to determine find out how to work round this throughout Hackweek!” -David Motsonashvili

I wished to higher perceive how AQI developed from being an thought throughout Hackweek, to the place it’s as we speak.

“As soon as we launched the early developer preview we examined this with a number of 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 firms we talked to have been Adobe, Luno, and Meetup. They’d actually beneficial suggestions that straight contributed to the roadmap. One instance is once we realized 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 staff have been early testers of AQI, and it was enjoyable to find out about what they considered the function.

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

We’ve actually come a great distance with the instruments builders need to handle bugs and crashes.

Get began with AQI

When you’re able to attempt AQI out for your self, obtain the newest model of Android Studio. You may as well view the documentation, information on medium, and our demo video to be taught extra about find out how to use it.