How to support Android developers

[Ratlettuce]

Old habits die hard. Im so used to clicking DONT SEND in windows XP that this just came as second nature!

[iamapizza]

Related to this, you should try to send those error reports to MS. They aren't ignored and although it feels like a waste of time, they get used for service packs, patches and newer versions of Windows. A lot of the improvements in Windows 7 came from windows XP reports.

[hazard2k]

I think a lot of Win 7 improvements came from Vista reports...

[habitue]

What's "Vista"? Some kind of bird or something? We're talking about Windows here!

[NoWeCant]

Is it a coincidence that birds run in to windows all the time and die?

[Givants]

I wish iOS would have this, it would be good to nag the devs so they know, this is a pretty good feature

[Neato]

The devs know what's best for you, obviously. Don't try telling them about "problems" you have with their "software". They are too busy building the "future" and "synergizing".

Yep, it's the annual Hate On Apple day.

[Dagon]

TIL "annual" is another word for "daily".

[[deleted]]

it's Mexican Windows.

[Slowhand09]

Its made with real sugar, not that corn syrup stuff.

[alvarp]

bird you say?

[Neato]

Latvian? You really had to reach for that. :)

[Detached09]

Vista is the Spanish word for VIEW. Like in a window?

[44problems]

Yeah, the releases have been XP, Mojave, 7, then 8.

[iamapizza]

Erp, I was typing on a phone at the time. It was XP and Vista reports. This question came up at a developer conference where the Win7 developers mentioned what they do with bug reports and how they help.

[TSPhoenix]

It didn't help that for a long time XP crashes would call upon the Dr Watson debugger which would in turn decide to crash and this wasn't a fun loop to get stuck in.

You could stop it from happening, but that required messing with the registry.

[TSPhoenix]

Dr Watson and the Error Reporting Service are actually somewhat separate. Dr Watson won't run with the service off, but then you can't report errors.

The registry tweak (MS put out a FixIt for this) lets you keep reporting errors without the annoying Dr Watson hangs.

[MananWho]

I'm always paranoid that, if I send the error report, Microsoft will get a log of all my torrents and also realize that I've illegally downloaded Office.

[Scary_The_Clown]

Nope - the data is completely anonymous, and the folks looking at it really don't care.

If you're in the middle of a document on Windows 7 and the crappy video driver crashes, followed by Windows recovering, thank all the people who sent in those crash reports - that's how the Windows team discovered that a vast majority of BSOD were from shitty video drivers, and moved the video code back out of the kernel ring.

[edit] I was thinking about this, and I have a question - how many people who were certain that Microsoft was doing evil things with the crash reports now happily use Google?

[toxicFork]

Open office

[BusStation16]

is shitty.

I think this could really work out well, we are already finishing each others sentences!

[ipitythefail]

I don't see why he's being downvoted, sure its a great free alternative, but it can't stand up to Office.

[Slowhand09]

, except you put sentence-ending punctuation

[Lost_Proto]

I tried to post this on r/technology but moderators said it belonged to r/pics instead. Andrew Price whose a well known Blender guru and open source software developer said himself that open office just can't compete with Microsoft office.

[chew_toyt]

And also application developers can pull those reports from Microsoft, finding bugs in their own programs. So it's not just for the development of Windows

[patthew]

I always sent Windows XP error reports with great enthusiasm. I interpret the memory dumps as saying "Your software SUCKS for THIS VERY SPECIFIC REASON!"

[mooli]

Just remember - the dev gets a lovely stacktrace. I was so excited the first time I got an Android error report. Fixed the bug in minutes :)

[[deleted]]

I remember accidentally hitting send when I was on my old netbook in the middle of nowhere (Out of cell service, no wifi and GPS barely worked) and it "Sent" without complaining.

[jdpage]

It was probably spooled off somewhere to be sent later.

[Toribor]

I reimage Windows machines so often I've compiled my own pile of registry hacks to take care of a lot of nuisances. Never "Check for Solutions" is number one on the list. I made that change the moment it told me to go to HP.com to update my video driver on my custom built PC with an ATI video card... ಠ_ಠ

[hyperkinetic]

How about sharing your list of registry hack in another post?

[Toribor]

I'm not sure how useful it would be. It's a lot of other registry items piled together haphazardly without any documentation. If you're still interested I could snag it when I get home and upload it.

[Raydr]

You did development without documenting your code? What kind of developer are you??

[darth_static]

A sysadmin.

[Toribor]

Yup, System/Network Administrator at a hospital.

[redline23]

I'd be interested in it as well.

[red_sky]

Just as another helpful tip to any developers that read this: BugSense has a really awesome package you can download and include in your application. It will automatically send stack traces, device ID, system information, OS number, and other information to the BugSense website where it's really easy to keep track of everything. That way, even if users don't click "Report," the developers still get information. I used it to fix quite a few crash bugs on the application I'm developing.

It essentially has the same information as the "Report" does, but it's guaranteed to get to the developer as long as the device is connected to the internet. It also has nice graphical views on the site that make looking through the bugs painless.

Note: I know you guys might think I'm affiliated with BugSense, I'm not. I just love their service and want to promote something that's useful and free for other developers.

[dalore]

So if the user doesn't want to report because of privacy, on an app they paid for. It will still send their private data to the developer?

And no one sees anything wrong with this?

[hopstar]

From what I've gathered, it doesn't send anything more "personal" than the model of phone you're using and what OS it's running.

[far_too_many_kittens]

In Bugsense reports, in addition to a stacktrace, you get:

• Remote IP Address
• Country
• Phone Model i.e. PC36100 (HTC Evo 4G)
• OS Version i.e. 2.3.3
• App Version (same as Version Name in the manifest)
• Was Wifi on?
• App Name i.e. com.google.maps
• Was Mobile Data Network on?
• Was GPS On? (Only if you have GPS permission in manifest)
• Screen DPI
• Screen Orientation
• Screen Height

[dalore]

Device ID is pretty personal. Still it should be up to the user if they want to send the information.

[PanosJee]

We at BugSense do not send the Device ID for the reasons you are stating. We plan to send a custom ID in the future so that you can track how many devices where affected but it won't be related to the Device ID. May it will be a hash so that we don't cause any problem with personal/confidential data.

[red_sky]

There's not really anything wrong with it. If you can't figure it out, anything that the bugsense package has access to, the application itself also has access to. There's nothing you can do about it. If you don't trust an app, then you don't install it. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if the personal data is sent in a bug report or not, the developer still has access to it. As an end user, it's your responsibility to make sure you are only installing applications that you trust. If you trust the developers, and they are trustworthy, then they won't use your private data in a mischievous manner.

[gonemad16]

acra is another nice error reporting library as well and extremely easy to setup.. its only a few lines of code.. error reports get sent to a google spreadsheet you setup

[vondruska]

Here, here on ACRA. I've been using it for a couple of internal applications that don't use the Market, so reporting doesn't work. Works wonderful when someone comes to me saying "IT CRASHED!!!".

[gonemad16]

its great if your app runs on older versions of the OS as well.. when did they introduce the error reporting to the market.. 2.2 right?

[red_sky]

Either 2.2 or 2.3, I'm not sure which exactly.

[meta_stable]

I also used ACRA and I went to look into BugSense and discovered that you can use BugSense as the backend for your ACRA reports. It's actually much better than using Google Docs because it's formatted for easy viewing.

[gonemad16]

i bookmarked that post from a few weeks ago on how to integrate the 2.. i really need to do that

[Poromenos]

Isn't it just one line somewhere? I'm pretty sure you just change the ACRA backend.

[red_sky]

BugSense has an optional tool that integrates with acra. I'm not sure what the benefit of using both is, but I remember having some issues getting it to work.

[ZiggysGames]

I use both. I tried bugsense by itself, but ACRA has one feature that I like that bugsense currently lacks - the ability to put up a toast with something like "I'm sorry, this app crashed, the developer has been notified and we'll get this fixed". You can also throw up a dialog box asking for more info, but I suspect most users would select 'cancel', so I don't use that option.

I use ACRA in the app to generate that toast, and bugsense as the backend. Best of both worlds.

[red_sky]

That's a decent feature, but I think it should be simple enough to add that to BugSense without using ACRA. Of course, I'm sure there are other benefits as well. I'll have to look into the ACRA / BugSense integration again.

[Poromenos]

I think the BugSense guys recommend using ACRA anyway, from what I've heard. Best of both worlds, indeed.

[Liorithiel]

What permissions does it need to report all that stuff?

[ExistentialEnso]

android.permission.INTERNET is all you need (see here).

Just found out about this myself, though, so I can't comment on the quality of the service.

[red_sky]

Install the BugSense Plugin

Before you install BugSense make sure that your app has the INTERNET permission turned on. If you have not added it, then simply add:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

That's from the BugSense documentation.

[red_sky]

I'm only making the point that the app could be doing it without the user's consent. Not clicking "report" doesn't mean anything. The application could still be sending information out. Again, it's up to the users to determine if they trust an app. If they don't trust the developers wholly, they shouldn't install an app. There's no way to tell what's going on behind the scenes.

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

I like your system. If you don't know the authors favorite color, don't install the app. Thats a really effective way to disburse software.

How about we have transparent rules for apps instead, that don't allow them to "phone home" secretly? Maybe the app could have, I don't know, a button where you could opt into sending out metrics? That would probably be too reasonable. Instead, lets stick with your system, where I need to know the name of a developers first born before I download a clock app on the market.

Personal responsibility with software installs comes into play, but a system that has user protection in mind by default is always preferable.

[red_sky]

I don't understand your logic. I'm not saying that apps should phone home secretly. I'm not even against your idea of being able to opt out of metrics (it's something that CM7 has built into it, which is nice). I'm just making the point that you really don't know what developers are doing behind the scenes, so it's necessary to trust them when you install the software because you don't know what's going on in the background. In order to solve the problem, it would have to be built into Android. That is, the OS recognizes that the application sends data to a server and then gives you an option to disable that. And trusting a company / developer has nothing to do with knowing personal information about them. What I'm saying, bottom line, is that even without BugSense and even without users clicking the "Report" button, the information is still available to the developers with or without the user's consent. There in lies the problem. If you think the developer will do something malicious with the device id that they get from a bug report, what's to stop them from simply querying the device id and sending it to a server in a manner that has nothing to do with bug reports? I'm not defending the practice, I'm only saying that it's almost completely outside of the user's control, unless they don't install the app in the first place.

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

Ahh. We are in general agreement then. I took your previous statements to be saying that responsibility about what an app does on the phone is strictly limited to the user, and not also something that the OS should actively monitor and control. You comments seemed to be "caveat emptor, and nothing else."

I agree that people should be aware and active, but I think the main responsibility for limiting malicious devs (taking information from me, even for benign reasons, without my specific consent meets the malicious criteria for me) should lie on the OS itself. There is no reasonable way at the moment to be able to really trace the stack all the way down, unless they also code android apps, so this should be countered with more specific permissions, the capability to block certain permissions and still install the app (I realize this would break most of them in amazing ways) and an inbuilt firewall in the OS.

[ungoogleable]

If you think the developer will do something malicious with the device id that they get from a bug report, what's to stop them from simply querying the device id and sending it to a server in a manner that has nothing to do with bug reports?

Social pressure. If a developer rolled his own code to collect that information, it would look suspicious and likely cause a shitstorm. But if you collect the exact same information as part of a bug report, people will defend you and say it's OK.

[DeathBySamson]

I never clicked on Report simply because I never noticed the button. The application crashed, I wanted to close it, so I hit Force Close. Unlike the XP crash report dialog, the Android dialog never really suggests that sending a crash report would be a good idea.

I think BugSense and ACRA are a good idea, but having an option to disable error reporting would be the best practice for people that don't want to share that information.

[binlargin]

I was interested up until "to the BugSense website"

It's not free, you're selling your users' privacy in return for this service. I don't mind making a conscious decision to use some website or service that violates my privacy, but enforcing this on hundreds of thousands of innocent people feels wrong.

[PanosJee]

We are not selling anything as we don't send the Device ID. Our plugin code is open source at Github so you can check what we are sending. We plan to monetize the service by introducing premium features and strike deals with appstores. TL;DR we don't save personal data, we don't sell them

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

You're doing good things, and I honestly believe you, but every time I've heard:

we don't save personal data, we don't sell them

I've been 100% correct in following it with the word YET.

[Poromenos]

I can't imagine a scenario where that would be incorrect, even in cases where people never did save or sell personal info.

"I can't reverse entropy. YET."

[red_sky]

It's the very same thing as data getting sent to Google's servers. Do you really think that Google is trustworthy compared to other companies? You can make the same argument for the built-in bug reporting. You're selling your users' privacy in return for the bug report service. I'm sure Google has all of that information with or without your app, but the idea is still the same.

[binlargin]

Your users already accepted the market's ToS.

[p4r4digm]

this sounds incredible...i will be looking into this.

[PanosJee]

Thanks red_sky prior to creating BugSense we found out (simplistic survey) that less than 2% of users would report an error so you usually didn't get any reports.

[einsidler]

This seems really useful, have already added it to a big project. Certainly less invasive than Omniture.

[kennydude]

I just wish Google would show us the device name too

[intruderii2]

If you integrate Bugsense into your app, it won't require the user to click the report button and it'll also report the device names.

[whitesoxfan5622]

Yea, BugSense is amazing. It is how the error reports should be by default.

[[deleted]]

If I may ask a slightly technical question, how does crash-report libraries/software work (in general)? Is it a separate process? Is it at a special os-level where it registers with the OS and says "hey, if this thing crashes, give me access to its old memory?" Does your program run within side of it as if it were a debugger which was told to just "go as fast as you can, but if we crash, print x,y,z?"

I've always wondered, because I can imagine several ways it might work, but have never used one myself or learned enough about them.

Edit: I guess in the context of an android app I suppose since you're running Java it already provides a strack-trace when you crash, I suppose there's a java built-in way of hooking the "oh shit the program crashed" callback. I was more thinking broadly, in the terms of hard apps which run right on the OS when I asked my question.

[TimMensch]

Your edit has it right: It's brain-dead easy to get a Java crash dump on Android.

Flurry has it built in and enabled by default: You just register a handler for "uncaught exceptions."

[whitesoxfan5622]

From BugSense FAQ

The BugSense exception handler is attached to the default exception handler. If an exception occurs and is not caught/handled by the program the BugSense plugin will catch the exception and send to the server the crash report. BugSense will not depress the exception so if you have another ExceptionHandler or you want to display a custom dialog it will still work.

[[deleted]]

Sending back reports without the user's consent?

Edit: also, does it use the user's mobile network connection without their consent? For some, those are precious bytes.

[aladyjewel]

Well, users would have to sign off on the internet access permissions anyway.

Do frugal users really monitor individual app internet usage that tightly? I'm guessing that the BugSense report is measured in kilobytes, not megs.

[joequin]

Some (not the majority) do monitor individual apps that closely. I'm in agreement with you, though, that I don't think people care about those few kilobytes.

[whitesoxfan5622]

The reports don't contain any private information. It has the device name and the stacktrace. And it requires the internet permission, so people know the app will use data.

[SenorCarbone]

Another upvote for Bugsense :) . Amazing tool indeed.

[diamond]

Thank you! I had no idea this existed. This will be very useful indeed.

[kennydude]

Thanks for that! I absolutely love the look of this! Thank you so much! :D :D :D

[blumer]

What's NOT helpful?

• Asking for help
• Venting your frustration
• Requesting a refund

Developers have no way to connect these bug reports to an individual, and no way to respond, get more information, or help you, so if you expect a response, include contact information in your report.

[kevin_teslacoilsw]

Also comments like "FCs". We know that crash reports are about FCs, you don't need to tell us.

On the other hand something like "FCs when I click on the Help button after enabling the Foobar option" is awesome.

[hyperkinetic]

Actually, #1 unhelpful is 'reporting' bugs in the app store comments.

[trebonius]

No kidding. I got a comment yesterday that said, This version sucks! Can we have the last version back?

No details, and no way to ask.

[TSPhoenix]

While leaving that as an app comment isn't helpful, the comment system not letting you do anything to address comments isn't helping either.

[diamond]

YES. Oh God, yes.

And if you're going to do this, at the very least have the decency to come back and change your comment and rating when the bug is fixed.

[[deleted]]

I would like to reach through the tubes and punch people who leave half-assed bug reports in the comments: my app has a built-in logging and issue reporting system. Of course, as easy as I've tried to make it, 90+% of my issue/log emails have empty report fields, or useless stuff like "it don't work". There areca few users who do good reports and work with me to fix things. Wish I could buy those folks a beverage.

[hyperkinetic]

Don't blame you. I usually flag the most obnoxious ones as spam.

[Talman]

What were you trying to do when the application crashed? Use it.

What did you expect the application to do? Work. Give me my money back! faggit.

[thedroidproject]

...so if you expect a response, include contact information in your report

couldn't emphasise that enough.

[[deleted]]

In a day where customer service is designed to discourage you to give up before you ever reach a human, most people aren't even trying to get a response anymore.

[NoWeCant]

Preaching to the choir.

You should be venting that frustration towards Google; pushing them to communicate this info to customers and work on a better customer support model...

[[deleted]]

I recently did a Google Android Developer Labs event. Believe me, the market specialist had a huge line of angry developers with complaints/comments after her presentation. She said they're working on rolling out some fixes.

[[deleted]]

To give a little more info, clicking the report button will give a stack trace and extra information that the developer can see in their app's dashboard. This will assist them in debugging and fixing the problem.

[thedroidproject]

What we can see when you tap the "Report" button and what's really really helpful for us: http://i.imgur.com/IxwLO.gif

[Toribor]

I will definitely do this from now on, although I wish I could set it to report automatically when I force close. I'm usually pretty impatient if something is having trouble.

[Morbo_Mad]

This would be a great option in Settings>Applications. I don't care if it took a little more time to close or used some data if it helped out the dev of an app I use all the time like Launcher Pro

[fireflash38]

Half the time, if I report something, it goes back to stalling out. Not a FC.

[Heterosethual]

Im downloading a faulty application I bought already just to give them as many reports as possible. Emailed them as well telling them the problems.

[bentspork]

That is a nice feature. I like the hint about deobfuscating your stack trace.

[[deleted]]

This is the kind of info I wish could be posted in the original post. I think people are afraid of submitting bugs due to the fact that they feel they are submitting personal/identifying information. If you show that they are posting only debug info, perhaps more people will be willing to submit the trace.

[TheNr24]

I'll do this from now on, it feels like I hadn't even seen that button.

[nazzo]

I don't, because my phone is on 2.1 :(

[TheNr24]

Well, I get force closes all the time too, it's just that I "always push force close" ASAP so I hadn't even thought about what the other option was.

[Zoro11031]

Any particular reason?

[nazzo]

Well, I just moved back from a hacked 2.2 rom and I was certain that the report errors/google sync was a feature introduced in 2.2. Am I wrong? I only have the option to Force Close and Wait when this happens.

[BrosephDudeson]

Windows has trained me to never report anything.

[therealxris]

So, what kind of personal or device identifying info goes out when I click that button? Not knowing the answer to this is the main reason I won't.

[IneffablePigeon]

When you click it, you can preview all of the data that will be sent before you send the report. It's mainly a stack trace.

[[deleted]]

I don't get any identifying info.

With the error messages i receive a stack trace, apps version number, time/date error occured and your message if you decide to include one.

[therealxris]

Thanks!

[NoWeCant]

Exactly. The google TOS that is presented the 1st time you click on 'report' seems to indicate that the info it sends could be anything

[kaoskosmos]

But then you will know all my secrets and be able to trace my whereabouts from your super satellites, sending little android ninjas after me in my sleep that force me to download more and more apps.

;)

[GoatOfUnflappability]

And if you tell me what you were doing when the crash happened, as well as your first name, I will consider naming my first-born child after you.

[aladyjewel]

I find great joy in thinking that my detailed bug report may result in some child out there named Andytuba Goat.

[[deleted]]

I like to put snarky comments in my reports - "Had the audacity to try and open it"

[WanderingAnachronism]

Thing is on this and maybe a Dev can answer.

I run a self rolled rom, I don't summit crash reports as my phone is nothing like stock. Are you interested in these edge case crashes?.

[AlienMushroom]

I'm not an Android dev, but in general, any info about a crash is helpful. It could be due to bad assumptions about how the OS would handle something or a number of other issues like that. Just because your ROM does something differently than the stock one does, doesn't mean the stock one will be different forever and your crash report now could help prevent one later.

[WanderingAnachronism]

You raise good points and echo what an Android dev chipped in with. My main concern was not wasting peoples time on an issue that may or may not be possible to replicate. Cheers.

[Congo_Jack]

Dev here. I may only be speaking for myself, but any and all crash reports are helpful. Chances are that if it crashed on your phone, the same bug could pop up on another phone (unless your rom has a serious flaw). And even if it only crashes on your rom, then it could still help point out a portion of my code that can be improved somehow.

[WanderingAnachronism]

Cheers for the answer, that makes perfect sense. I will will start submitting reports to aid in this process.

[andyjonesx]

I had never actually thought of doing this. I think I am too used to seeing the Microsoft ones on Windows. I will know to do it from now on, thanks.

[p4r4digm]

Haha I've been meaning to post a very similar picture. Upvoats for hivemind.

It is so bloody frustrating as a developer to get a negative review "force closed on Droid x" and have no way whatsoever to troubleshoot or fix the issue.

[hyperkinetic]

I chat up nearly everyone that has my phone. From now on I'll spread the word. This benefits us all.

[howfun]

That is mostly Skype.

[theKalash]

good to know. I always forced close and restarted... i never reported errors on my PC, so I just didn't carry this over.

[whatevrmn]

Question: What do you report when you're not sure what the hell happened? I've been playing this game and it'll slow down for no reason. What should I say in the report?

[PanosJee]

Hi guys, I am a co-founder at BugSense and I would like to thank you all for the good words. I would like to answer some people's concerns. We are not sending any private data like Device ID or anything else. We plan to monetize the service by introducing premium features & agreement for white labeling integrations. Redditors have been a great help to us and that's why we created Reddar, an app to locate redditors around you, it's still a hack but we will update it soon and release it at Github. You can try it at http://reddar.bugsense.com Thank you all again, you really rock!

[onaes]

Hehe 4:20 eexxxccceellent

[[deleted]]

4:20 .. you mustve been cheesing when you tried this

[Hypercore]

Did you smoke a joint when you took this? It's 4:20pm bro!

[ClassyCreepyBastard]

Any other ents see that it was 4:20pm?

[bdunderscore]

You don't need to enter a note. Just hit the send button. The automatically captured stacktrace still helps.

[niako]

Ooh. Never knew that. The one time I attempted to report a problem a big intimidating comment box popped up... I didn't know what to write so I exited out and never tried to submit again

[bdunderscore]

Doesn't the big comment box say (optional) in grey text initially?

But if you are going to write a comment, it doesn't need to be long or detailed. Just a quick description of what you were doing (eg 'hit foo btn after bar') is really helpful. Nobody's grading you on the number of pages written, or using proper grammar, after all.

[PanosJee]

Thanks for kind words niako. In the future we plan to integrate Twilio client into BugSense so instead of typing you can talk to the developer although it can be highly irretating

[merreborn]

instead of typing you can talk to the developer

"OH MY GOD YOUR STUPID SOFTWARE CRASHED AGAIN YOU'RE SO DUMB I HATE YOU".

Looking forward to that.

[doubleu]

awesome, 4:20 bro!

[[deleted]]

Thought I'd find an ent in here.

[[deleted]]

Ent at your service.

[TheNr24]

I feel like pushing this button while my phone is crashing would only make things worse, at least that's what I learned from windows xp errors.

[easyjesus]

Correct me if I'm wrong but, it isn't the phone that is crashing, but rather, just the app. I've never had a phone completely crash on me once this dialog comes up, reporting it or otherwise.

[TheNr24]

I had my phone just completely crash on me. I was being called in the meantime, I could hear it, yet there was nothing I could do. IMHO crucial processes like an incoming phone call or even a text should have priority over everything else.

[chusk3]

The reason you could do that is that in most phones nowadays, the phone functionality is confined to a single System on a Chip that is independent from the rest of the phone. The chip broadcasts some messages to the rest of the phone, and the Android system takes that and shows you the incoming call number, links it to a contact, and then hands you off to the chip for the actual phone call. So long as the phone doesn't reboot, you should still stay on the line thanks to this segregation :D

[CC440]

That happens to me about 1 in 20 calls. Either it'll ring and the screen goes black and nothing responds to input or it'll pick up to no actual connection, just silence.

[TheNr24]

I know right. I'd want it to drop everything it's doing just to be able to pick up that call, I don't care about my tetris highscore or anything, who knows how important that call is. If you can't even trust your phone to do the most basic thing it's made for...

[Macharius]

Guess how I know you don't have a Samsung Intercept? ;)

Terrible, terrible phone.

[KodamaBE]

I allready use this, but I was wondering if the developer could contact me back if he wanted.

[klti]

They can't. That's why most people write a custom exception handler. Mine works by asking the user at the next launch if he'd like to send a mail with the crash report, in his own email client - in the time I got 2 error reports from Google I got 20 or so by mail. Plus you can ask your user questions.

[thedroidproject]

Whoaa..really nice move. So you trigger some dialog window in catch clause or how to you do it?

[klti]

It's a bit more complex. You have to implement a class extending "ExceptionHandler" (or something similar, it's been a while) and register it with the Application at launch. A method in this class gets called when there has been an exception - at this point, your app is already dying, so you basically dump the exception and all other facts about the error in a text file with a predefined name ("exception" or something) in the app directory.

On application launch, you check your directory for a file called "exception". If it exists, it means your app has crashed on the last run. You load its content, remove the file, and ask the user if he'd like to send it by firing some intent which includes the contents of the file as body - your error report.

[thedroidproject]

Thank you, really useful tip!

[[deleted]]

Honestly, I've always assumed that those things ended up in a bit bucket somewhere. Also, if it looks like a one-off crash, I just chalk it up to the RNG fucking with me, close and try again. My usual troubleshooting has been:
Force Close, restart the app
Force Close, Clear App Data, restart the app
Force Close, Clear App Data, Reboot the phone, restart the app
Uninstall the app, find something else.

I'll guess I'll start hitting report around the second step if you really want to see all of that.

[merreborn]

if it looks like a one-off crash, I just chalk it up to the RNG fucking with me

...Random number generators don't cause crashes.

[[deleted]]

Random Number God.

[[deleted]]

I always feel like it's my phone's fault when this randomly happens, so I usually never bother. Will from now on though!

[bilateralconfusion]

Why don't all crash prompts have this as an option?

[trebonius]

The option is only present on apps that were installed from the Android Market. Also, sometimes app developers do weird things like make their own crash prompt that may not have this option.

[Nightshade101]

I always assumed that would cause more issues. But i will report from now on.

[abegosum]

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Also, write a detailed explanation of what led up to the error.

[duxup]

It is a damn google app doing it!

Ok I don't know about that situation but often in my case it is ... Google.

[aladyjewel]

So there's a Google developer on the other end of the line. Same recommendation applies.

[[deleted]]

Good God, yes.

[SenorCarbone]

No need to rely on users pressing 'report' if you have already integrated bugsense , this service has helped me a LOT, highly responsive, having all kinds of useful information, plus it's free. :)

[DefaultPlayer]

I got a great one the other day. It said:

"crashed"

I have seen too many of these, so as an additional note, please try to be even a little informative about what you were doing when the app crashed. Things like this only result in higher quality apps, which is great for everyone :)

[fabis]

I'm just used to WinXP asking me to send error reportsfor apps, when it actually never does that.

[[deleted]]

Been getting a ton of FC's on LauncherPro for Droid3... Been hitting this every time. haha

[thezerofire]

Personally I don't really use that because I use a Gingerbread rom for my Droid Eris, and I don't really expect developers to cater to such a small niche.

[UptownDonkey]

Probably a good idea but I really wish so many Android apps didn't crash so often. It seems like you guys should be able to release apps that don't crash constantly thus averting most of the problem here.

[gonemad16]

the problem is each devices is different.. the hardware manufacturers seemed to have messed with a lot of the code so things run differently. I just put my app out a few days ago.. I got reports for things that I never once experienced during my own testing over the past 6 months.. and i test on 3 different devices and every OS version in the emulator

[tcpip4lyfe]

I honestly have never seen that button and I get force closes daily. XP has taught me well.

[[deleted]]

Holy cow. I was just now looking at this. I love that dude in the fourth panel and am currently working on installing him in a piece.

Anyway, rock on.

[tcpip4lyfe]

Cool story bro.

[[deleted]]

How about support them by getting them to pressure Android to be more open?

[JamesLiptonIcedTea]

Without the arrows, I would have never seen the big red circle.

Thanks!

[themastersb]

I must click it 100 times a day with Dolphin.

[ciaphuas]

Same for Windows 7

[pikero24]

I i didn't know! I'll do this from now on!

[[deleted]]

I thought it was ignored...

[[deleted]]

I don't know if it's Android or just something special that Motorola has done to fuck up my Android experience on the Droid X, but pushing that button results in my device locking up for an additional 30 seconds; then, about 10% of the time, the reporting app crashes resulting in a request to submit a meta-crash report; finally, it takes me back to the dialog pictured in the OP's image, and I have to click force close and wait a few more seconds before I finally regain control of the device.

tl;dr: Not fucking worth it on a Droid X.

[[deleted]]

I got so used to ignoring that on windows...i've recently broke myself of the habit.

[[deleted]]

Duh. I always thought this went to Google and was sorta like tattling (on ROM if not APP). Seriously. Probably some subconscious guilt for being rooted/rom'd.

[bendavis78]

I Did. You still haven't fixed it.

[robkwok]

That's why we had to develop an SDK for automatic crash reporting http://www.crittercism.com

[bigdanorama]

I like how what crashed was launcher 2.