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 know how we are able to make the Android platform higher, I’m obsessed with 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 throughout the context of your native Android Studio mission. This can be a huge step in how Android builders can enhance their app stability, and I needed to study extra in regards to the evolution of how cell builders have managed crashes all through the years. You may watch the behind the Scenes video on AQI right here, and throughout 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 area since 2010 and had a whole lot of palms on expertise serving to debug consumer experiences.

“Within the early days, builders cared deeply about consumer crashes, however they didn’t have the instruments to duplicate or debug the difficulty, or to know which customers had been being impacted. I keep in mind spending numerous time attempting to breed points primarily based on minimal info from bug stories.

One time I keep in mind making an attempt to debug an expertise solely occurring in a selected 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 particular person, I noticed folks had been typically 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 informed me this was a sport changer for crash administration.

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

My workforce acquired crash stories 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 slim 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 appear to be the crash might even be doable! An engineer on my workforce was ready to make use of this information from Crashlytics to uncover that the supply was a race situation that will 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 needed to study extra in regards to the thought behind AQI, so I chatted with David Motsonashvili, a software program engineer on the Firebase workforce who labored on the preliminary prototype.

“The unique thought for the combination got here from a quarterly Hackweek, the place we had been capable of experiment on our personal tasks. 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 change 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 route as a substitute, 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 exhibiting our check app’s Crashlytics crash information within the IDE due to limitations we had with the API. It was a very enjoyable mission to determine the best way to work round this throughout Hackweek!” -David Motsonashvili

I needed to higher perceive how AQI advanced from being an thought throughout Hackweek, to the place it’s at present.

“As soon as we launched the early developer preview we examined this with a couple of inside Google groups, and so they 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 had been Adobe, Luno, and Meetup. They’d actually helpful suggestions that straight contributed to the roadmap. One instance is once we discovered many groups wanted a spot to collaborate inside AQI, so we after all moved ahead with including the Crashlytics notes function into AQI.” -David Motsonashvili

Fashionable Crash Administration

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

“I used to be really comfortable 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 just by no means knew you wanted! I particularly like which you can filter points primarily based on the completely different variants in your app. Each engineer that I do know and work with is obsessed with 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

Should you’re able to attempt AQI out for your self, obtain the most recent model of Android Studio. You too can view the documentation, information on medium, and our demo video to study extra about the best way to use it.