Mobile Monitor
Article Summary
Snap's Lens Studio just gave AR developers a powerful weapon against performance issues. If your lenses are failing submission due to slow activation or low FPS, this tool is your answer.
Snap released detailed documentation on their Lens Profiler, a microsecond-level performance analysis tool built on the open-source Perfetto framework. It helps developers diagnose why their AR lenses are slow to load or dropping frames during runtime.
Key Takeaways
- Records real device traces showing exactly what happens during lens activation and every frame
- Reveals hidden performance killers like disabled objects still loading at startup
- Uses Perfetto's open-source format, viewable in any compatible trace analysis tool
- Sorts performance slices by wall duration, self time, and occurrence count
- Identifies specific scene objects and scripts causing activation time failures
Snap's Lens Profiler gives AR developers frame-by-frame visibility into performance bottlenecks, helping them pass submission requirements and ship smoother experiences.
About This Article
Snapchat developers have trouble finding performance bottlenecks when they submit lenses. Activation time and frame rate failures show up on multiple device types, not just their own machines.
The Lens Profiler has keyboard shortcuts like W/S to zoom and A/D to pan. Developers can click on slices to isolate performance issues. They sort metrics by wall duration, self time, and occurrence count to find expensive operations like deserialization.
Developers discovered that disabled objects still use activation time. They now use Scene Manager with asynchronous prefabs to delay loading unnecessary assets. This fixes submission failures without trial and error.