How to Fix App Quality Issues with Android Vitals (Part 1)
Article Summary
Over 40% of one-star reviews on Google Play mention app stability issues. Google's Android Vitals can help you fix them before users bail.
Wojtek Kaliciński from Google's Android team breaks down how to use Android Vitals in the Play Console to identify and fix two critical app quality issues: excessive wakeups that drain battery and ANR events that freeze your UI. This is part one of a two-part series on improving app performance metrics.
Key Takeaways
- Excessive wakeups: more than 10 per hour triggers the bad behavior threshold
- Use JobScheduler or Firebase JobDispatcher instead of AlarmManager for smarter batching
- ANRs happen when main thread blocks: never perform disk or network I/O there
- StrictMode catches accidental blocking calls during development before users see them
- Better ratings and reviews lead to higher Play Store rankings and more installs
Critical Insight
Fixing excessive wakeups and ANR events directly improves user ratings, which boosts your Play Store ranking and drives more installs.
