When something crashes in an app, fixing the bug is usually quite straightforward. But apps can also be blighted by bugs that don’t result in crashes, and this is where things start to get interesting. To find and fix these bugs, you will require as much information as possible and probably a combination of tools. Let me explain a process we know as ‘bug forensics’, based on a real bug that has impacted one of Bugfender’s customers.

When you’re building a website that needs to be updated in real-time, your first thought is probably to add WebSockets to your application. However Websockets is a low-level protocol and to use it, you’ll need to add another layer on top to manage the information you want to get. This is where MQTT is handy, as it’s a higher-level protocol that simplifies working with data streams.

Today, May 21st, we received an interesting email from a journalist writing for Fast Company. Apparently, a privacy-focused company audited the app Care19, North Dakota’s COVID-19 contact tracking app, and they found that an anonymous tracking ID generated by the app was sent via API to Bugfender along with other identifiers. While the journalist contacted the app developers, he also gave us the opportunity to comment.

We are thrilled to announce Bugfender’s new javascript SDK for the frontend, which applies the simplicity of our mobile SDKs to web applications. Bugfender JS has all the features that you already know from iOS and the Android SDKs, enabling you to: In this blog, we’re going to tell you how to access our new SDK, provide a quick overview of its benefits, and bring you up to speed with the evolution of the Bugfender project.

OutOfMemoryException is a common and frustrating bug, and one of the prime causes of unexpected app shutdown. “Why is this happening now, if the app was working perfectly yesterday?” It’s a question which perplexes both rookie and advanced Android developers the world over. There are a variety of potential causes of OutOfMemory Exceptions, but one of the most common is the memory leak — the allocation of memory in the app which is never released.

Welcome to the spring Bugfender newsletter. Despite COVID-19 and thanks to being a remote company, we continue working on Bugfender to bring you new updates and features you can take advantage of. Bugfender is now hosted in twin datacenters. With a combination of High Availability and Master-Replica setups, we’re now able to process logs faster than ever and bring the service back up much faster in the unlikely event of datacenter-wide outages.

Ever since we started logging with Bugfender back in 2015, we’ve been working towards integration with Firebase, the app development platform created by Google. Firebase is famous for the breadth of its integration libraries and millions of people use the product around the world, drawn to its sleek UI and range of features. Our primary goal has been integration with Firebase Crashlytics Log, which underpins the entire platform.

When we decided to start working remotely back in 2013, we never thought about the health benefits. We chose to carve a remote path because it would make us more efficient, more fluid and more dynamic, not because it might stop us getting sick. But now, thousands of companies around the world are going remote for precisely that reason.

If you’ve got an app that keeps going down for no apparent reason, don’t worry, this quick and easy guide will give you the tools to get it up and running smoothly. To help you better, first select what type of user you are and what problem you have: If you’re not from the tech world yourselves, you probably think us programmers get everything right all the time.