How to instruct users to report a bug in Android

Question

How do you instruct users to report a bug in Android? Any advice or tips?

I'd like to get send detailed instructions to my users to get the most of their bug report. I know there are various apps that send bug reports from the device and I was wondering how other Android developers deal with this.

Answer 1

A bug reporting SDK such as Instabug can let you achieve that.

As you can see, it displays, by default, a welcome message to your users 10 seconds after opening the app. It displays instructions on how to invoke Instabug depending on the invocation method you're using (A button or a shake gesture).

After signing up and including the library in your code, you can switch between different display messages. Use either of the following lines depending on whether you're in beta or production.

Instabug.setWelcomeMessageState(WelcomeMessage.State.BETA);
Instabug.setWelcomeMessageState(WelcomeMessage.State.LIVE);

Each bug report contains various information about device details, network logs, console logs, view hierarchy inspection, and visual reproduction steps.

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For full disclosure, I work at Instabug. Let me know if I can help.

Answer 2

There are solutions for instrumenting the application in a way that will collect contextual information and allow the user to provide in-app feedback. Either by shaking the phone or some other trigger like a menu option.

Here is a "currently free" offering from IBM called Mobile Quality Assurance, that will instrument the application so that as a user uses the application contextual information is collected as they use the app. When they want to provide feedback or submit a bug, they can shake the phone and it will capture the screen at the time, give them a form to enter additional information and then submit the screenshot, contextual information and comments to the testing portal.

Here's a link for more info on MQA

Answer 3

Taking Gilbert's advice into account, I decided to create my own app. I hereby present you: Bug Reporter.

It allows users to send you a report with device information and optional logcat. It also supports intent extras to customize its behavior if case you want to launch it from your app.