Report Types

There are three different types of reports that, while function similarly for the end-user, appear with different types on the dashboard in order to easily separate between incoming issues. All three types will reach your dashboard with the same amount of information and can be filtered so that you can look at specific types only.

Bug

When the user selects "Report a bug" from the prompt options, the sent report will appear with type Bug. This type of report is primarily meant for reporting bugs that were found in the application.

Improvement

Selecting "Suggest an improvement" from the prompt options will open the improvement suggestion form that your user can use to give you feedback on how you can improve the application in certain areas. These reports are shown on the dashboard with type "Improvement".

Question

The third option in the prompt options is "Ask a question". The purpose behind this option is for users that don't quite have a bug or an idea for an improvement, but rather a question they'd like to ask you. These show on your dashboard with type "Question".

Report Content

The reports (bugs, improvements, and questions) that your users submit from your app (from the Prompt Options) are sent to the bugs page of your dashboard.

With each report, you receive a plethora of details that will help you fix bugs and get more context about the comments you receive. Throughout this page, you will learn about all the information that comes in these reports, as well as any relevant APIs that you can use to customize the data that you receive, including:

• User Attributes
• Bug Report Fields
• Attachments
• Auto Screen Recording
• Logs
• Repro Steps
• Session Profiler
• View Hierarchy
• Tags

User Attributes

Default attributes as well as any custom user attributes that you set are automatically sent to your dashboard with all reports.

Default attributes listed in each report include:

• App version
• Device
• OS version
• App view
• Device location
• Session duration

More details about how to set custom user attributes can be found here.

Bug Report Fields

The image below shows the first view that your users see when reporting a bug after showing the SDK.

Email Address

By default, your users are required to enter a valid email address to submit a bug or feedback. To allow users to submit bugs and feedback without an email, use the following method.

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.EMAIL_FIELD_OPTIONAL)

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.EMAIL_FIELD_OPTIONAL);

You can also remove the email field from the UI completely using the following API.

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.EMAIL_FIELD_HIDDEN)

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.EMAIL_FIELD_HIDDEN);

Comment

By default, your app users can submit bugs and feedback without entering a description. To require users to leave a comment before they are able to send bugs or feedback, use the following method.

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.COMMENT_FIELD_REQUIRED)

BugReporting.setOptions(Option.COMMENT_FIELD_REQUIRED);

You can also set a minimum number of characters as a requirement for the comments field using the API below:

BugReporting.setCommentMinimumCharacterCount(20, ReportType.BUG, ReportType.FEEDBACK, ReportType.QUESTION)

BugReporting.setCommentMinimumCharacterCount(20, ReportType.BUG, ReportType.FEEDBACK, ReportType.QUESTION);

Attachments

Your users can submit two types of attachments with any report: default Instabug attachments (files that they can select from their device) and custom extra attachments (additional files that you can attach using code).

Instabug Attachments

When your app users show Instabug, the SDK automatically captures a screenshot of their current view. This is the default attachment that is sent with any report. Your users can annotate this screenshot by drawing on, magnifying, or blurring specific parts.

In addition, there are other attachment types that your users can choose to send with each report. All attachment types can be enabled or disabled.

The attachment options are:

• Extra screenshots
• Images from photo library
• Screen recording

All attachment options are enabled by default if they are available in your current plan.

You can customize the attachment options that are available for your users to send by passing its corresponding boolean value as an argument in the following API call.

// Arguments:initialScreenshot, extraScreenshot, galleryImage & ScreenRecording
BugReporting.setAttachmentTypesEnabled(true, true, true, true);

// Arguments:initialScreenshot, extraScreenshot, galleryImage & ScreenRecording
BugReporting.setAttachmentTypesEnabled(true, true, true, true);

Each of the parameters is a boolean used to indicate if a certain type is enabled or not.

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Required SDK and Android version

If you are on Android SDK version v13.0.0 or above and Android API level 33 or above and want to allow your users to attach screen recordings to the reports, make sure to manually add the below permission to the manifest file:

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

📘

Need to make views hidden in screenshots?

Some views can be set as private in order to have them hidden from screenshots, repro steps, and the view hierarchy. You can do so by following the steps here.

Extra Attachments

You can also attach up to three custom files to reports, each up to 5MB.

Use the following method to add a new file attachment.

Instabug.addFileAttachment(Uri.fromFile(file), "file_name.txt")

Instabug.addFileAttachment(Uri.fromFile(file), "file_name.txt");

A new copy of the file at fileURI will be attached with each bug and feedback submitted. Extra files are only copied when reports are sent, so you can safely call this API whenever files are available on disk, and the copies attached to your reports will always contain the latest changes at the time of sending.

Alternatively, you can pass data directly as bytes using the API below:

Instabug.addFileAttachment(@NonNull final byte[] data, @NonNull final String fileNameWithExtension)
 //Name field is optional

Instabug.addFileAttachment(@NonNull final byte[] data, @NonNull final String fileNameWithExtension);
//Name field is optional

If more than three files are attached, the API overrides the first file. The file also has to be available locally at the provided path when the report is being sent.

To clear the list of files to be attached, use the method below. This method doesn't delete any files from the local file system. It just removes them from the list of attachments for each report.

Instabug.clearFileAttachment()

Instabug.clearFileAttachment();

Media Projection

If your application uses any hardware accelerated views, chances are that the captured screenshots will be blank for these views. In these cases, you can use the API below to enable screenshots via media projection. Please note that enabling this will request permission from the users to record the screen at the beginning of the session.

BugReporting.setScreenshotByMediaProjectionEnabled(true)

BugReporting.setScreenshotByMediaProjectionEnabled(true);

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Requires API 21

In order to enable media projection, the minimum support Android SDK version is 21.

Make sure to add FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PROJECTION to your manifest file.

Auto Screen Recording [Beta]

📘

Used for Internal Testing

The main purpose behind this feature is to specifically use it for internal testing rather than on production.

You can also automatically capture a screen recording of your app up to the last 30 seconds before a report is sent. By default, this is disabled. Your users will also be prompted once the recording starts at the beginning of the session and will have the ability to remove the video from the attachments when sending the report. The auto screen recording attachment counts towards the limit of 4 attachments in total.

Disabling/Enabling Auto Screen Recording

If you'd like to enable or disable the auto screen recording feature, you can use the API below.

BugReporting.setAutoScreenRecordingEnabled(true)

BugReporting.setAutoScreenRecordingEnabled(true);

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In order to enable Auto Screen Recording, make sure to add FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PROJECTION to your manifest file.

User Consent

📘

To use checkboxes, you need a minimum Instabug Android SDK version of v12.3.0.

📘

To use actionable user consents, you need a minimum of Instabug Android SDK version of v13.2.0.

You can use the below API to add a checkbox to your bug reporting form. These checkboxes could be used to:

• Ask for the user's consent without the SDK reacting to the user's answer.
• Ask for the user's consent and have the SDK drop specific data based on the user's answer.

This will help you define:

• Description: Text that appears on the end-user's device.
• Key: Title that appears on the dashboard.
• State: Whether the user input is mandatory or not.
• Default Value: Whether the checkbox is checked by default or unchecked by default.
• Action Type [Optional]: If you want the SDK to drop specific data based on the user’s answer to the checkbox, add one value from the below options.
  • Options:
    • DROP_AUTO_CAPTURED_MEDIA: Drops all auto-captured media, without dropping the attachments that the user attached manually
    • DROP_LOGS: Drops all captured logs, whether they were captured automatically or added by the company itself
    • NO_CHAT: Doesn't open a new chat for this specific report and disables the chat functionality on your dashboard for this report.

BugReporting.addUserConsent(key, description, isMandatory, isChecked, ActionType.)

BugReporting.addUserConsent(key, description, isMandatory, isChecked, ActionType.);

Logs

A whole host of logs are sent with every report. These logs include:

• Console Logs: Default logs that are printed to the console when the application is running.
• Instabug Logs: Logs with different verbosity levels that you can add manually.
• User Steps: Every step the user has taken in the form of log entries.
• Repro Steps: User steps prior to the bug report grouped by view.
• Network Logs: A log of each network request.
• User Events: A manual log of actions that a user has taken.

More details regarding logging can be found here. Different log types are enabled depending on your plan.

Repro Steps

Repro Steps help you reproduce a bug by displaying your users' actions in each view of your app. With each view, you will find a list of actions that tell you exactly what the user did in that view. More details can be found here.

This is enabled by default depending on your plan.

Session Profiler

With each report, you'll receive a detailed environment profile covering the last 60 seconds before a bug or feedback was submitted. This Session Profiler includes device data like memory load and battery state. This is enabled by default depending on your plan. More details about the information contained in the Session Profiler can be found here.

View Hierarchy

With the View Hierarchy feature, you can visually inspect each layer in your app and see all the properties and constraints of each subview so you can spot errors at a glance.

This feature is critical for investigating UI bugs as it makes the process of finding the problem and fixing it faster and simpler. For example, if you receive a report that a certain UI view is missing, you can use View Hierarchy to easily discover if the missing view is hidden behind a higher layer, out of the parent view's bounds, or missing from the window.

Any editable text or text fields will automatically be replaced with asterisks.

View Hierarchy is disabled by default. If you need to enable View Hierarchy, you can do so as shown in the following example.

Instabug.Builder(this, "c626fd74f74eb721f1ab9c41478cf46f")
            .setViewHierarchyState(Feature.State.DISABLED)
            .build()

new Instabug.Builder(this, "APP_TOKEN")
  	.setViewHierarchyState(Feature.State.ENABLED)
  	.build();

🚧

Enabled from SDK version 8.3.0

The View Hierarchy will only be visible for reports coming from an application running a minimum SDK version of 8.3.0.

Disclaimer Text

Within the bug reporting form, you can add a disclaimer text with hyperlinked text in case you'd like to redirect users to a different page in the event that they click on a specific text (for example, if you'd like to hyperlink your privacy policy).

BugReporting.setDisclaimerText("Instabug can help developers produce more quality code. [Learn more](https://www.instabug.com) and [more](http://string-functions.com/length.aspx).")

BugReporting.setDisclaimerText("Instabug can help developers produce more quality code. [Learn more](https://www.instabug.com) and [more](http://string-functions.com/length.aspx).");

Tags

You can add tags to the reports you receive to help you filter and triage bugs in your dashboard. More details regarding tags can be found here.