Conquering Our Android Crash Count
Article Summary
Strava thought they had a few hundred crashes per day. Crashlytics revealed they were missing 42,000 crashes per week.
The Strava Android team integrated Crashlytics crash reporting and discovered their app stability was far worse than Google Play Store metrics suggested. This is their journey from 5% of users experiencing daily crashes down to less than 1%.
Key Takeaways
- Crashlytics revealed 7,000+ daily crashes that Google Play never reported
- Single IllegalStateException in Android TTS caused 50% of all crashes
- Setting largeHeap=true reduced crashes 71% by addressing Google Maps OOMs
- Three releases over 10 weeks brought crash rate from 5% to under 1%
- Most remaining crashes now occur on legacy devices without largeHeap support
Critical Insight
By implementing proper crash reporting and systematically fixing the top offenders, Strava reduced their Android crash rate from 5% to under 1% of daily users in just 10 weeks.
