Embrace Feature Releases for 3/31/2021

We’re so excited to share our latest features and improvements to the Embrace dashboard!

In this update, we’ll give a walkthrough of the updates to our Affected Sessions widget and Crash Details page. We’ve made a number of changes to get you to the data you care about faster than ever.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this post:

How the Affected Sessions widget is more cohesive
How the collapsible stack trace leads you directly to the relevant line
How it’s easier to examine background threads
How Watchdog terminations now automatically lead you to console logs

The Affected Sessions widget appears on the Crash Details page, the ANR Details page, the Log Details page, and the corresponding Issue Details pages. It provides actionable information so that mobile teams can quickly scan for details and patterns before diving into more comprehensive User Timelines. The following image is what the Affected Sessions widget looked like previously.

It is a bit disconnected — the information for each session is separated across these two places. When you use the arrows to toggle between sessions, the stack trace also updates, just as it should. However, the experience isn’t particularly cohesive because the two pieces feel like distinct parts of the page.

Our goal was to integrate everything into one clean widget. Introducing our updated Affected Sessions widget:

Now, all the session information is contained in tabs within a single widget. Since the stack trace is frequently the first piece of data that developers look for, we’ve brought it front and center. In addition, we’ve streamlined the presentation so you can focus on the type of data you’re interested in. Here is how we’ve categorized the data into tabs:

Stack Trace
The stack trace of the main thread

Threads
The stack traces of any background threads

App
Issues
App Version
App Build
App State
Last Captured View
Embrace SDK Version
App Environment
JS Patch – (React Native only)
Unity Version – (Unity only)
Unity Build ID – (Unity only)

OS & Device
OS Version
Device Model
Location
Disk Used – if available

User
Any user identifiers, such as User ID and Embrace ID

Session
Session Start Time
Session End Time
Event Time
Session Duration
Cold Start – whether the session was a cold start
Screenshot – if available

When you toggle between sessions, the highlighted tab is preserved so you can quickly focus on what you’re interested in (e.g. the OS & Device patterns for a given ANR).

How the Collapsible Stack Trace Leads You Directly to the Relevant Line

It is not uncommon for the most relevant line of a stack trace to be nowhere near the top. After all, Embrace’s crash grouping methodology deemphasizes OS libraries in favor of first-party and third-party code. If the method that’s ultimately responsible for the crash is buried underneath several system-level methods, developers waste time scrolling through a stack trace to find the most pertinent information.

Well, not anymore! Our updated Affected Sessions widget now shows a collapsible stack trace that hides lines that are more than two away from the relevant line.

You can easily expand the stack trace if you need to examine additional lines, but this change gets you to what you’re looking for as fast as possible.

How It’s Easier to Examine Background Threads

On the Crash Details page, our previous version of the Affected Sessions widget had the background threads accessible at the bottom of the stack trace. This required you to scroll everytime you wanted to inspect them. Now, we have added them as a tab, so you can easily switch between the main thread and background threads.

How Watchdog Terminations now Automatically Lead You to Console Logs

Watchdog terminations on iOS occur when the OS kills an app for violating rules regarding time or resource usage. We’ve written about them before if you’d like to learn more:

The reason they are so difficult to debug is because you almost never get a stack trace for them. Embrace helps you solve them in many ways:

We automatically classify them through system console logs. (We also classify AutoLayout and CollectionView Exceptions.)

We provide the system console logs in production for further context.

What’s even better is that when the issue is a Watchdog termination, we will automatically highlight the console logs tab so that you can jump directly into the most actionable data.

And that’s it! Now, from the Affected Sessions widget and the Crash Details page, you can get to actionable information faster, whether it’s the most relevant line in a stack trace, system console logs for Watchdog terminations, or specific session details. We’re excited to see how these updates help your mobile teams!

As always, please share any feedback so we can continue to build features and improvements that help your team be successful.

How Embrace Helps Mobile Teams

Embrace is an observability and debugging platform built for mobile teams. We are a comprehensive solution that fully reproduces every user experience from every single session. Your team gets the data it needs to proactively identify, prioritize, and solve any issue that’s costing you users or revenue.

Want to see how Embrace can help your team grow your mobile applications with best-in-class tooling and world-class support? Request a customized demo and see how we help teams set and exceed the KPIs that matter for their business!