This article helps you to understand your pre-launch report results by providing an overview of the errors, warnings, or issues your report might uncover. If you want to know how to set up and run a pre-launch report, go to Use a pre-launch report to identify issues.
When your pre-launch report is available, you can view a test summary that includes the number of errors, warnings, and minor issues found during testing, categorized by issue type. You’ll also see a recommendation based on your app’s testing results.
Note: Though the pre-launch report is a practical and powerful tool that can help you to improve your app, Google can’t guarantee that tests will identify all issues. To ensure that your results are as comprehensive and relevant to you as possible, review and update your pre-launch report settings.
Your pre-launch report overview
The Pre-launch report overview page provides a summary of any unique errors, warnings, and minor issues found during testing, grouped into four categories: Stability, Performance, Accessibility, and Security and trust. These categories are described below in more detail.
You’ll also see the number of devices your app was tested on and, depending on the test results, insights and recommendations that can help you improve your app.
Here are some examples of the issues that are found during testing:
- Errors: Include crashes, ANRs, use of defective libraries, and use of unsupported APIs which have been restricted.
- Warnings: Include slow startup and load times, sign-in or crawl issues, memory issues, use of unsupported APIs which aren’t yet restricted.
- Minor issues: Include missing content labels, color contrast issues, small touch target sizes, implementation issues.
Your pre-launch report details
StabilityEach section of the Stability tab details issues found during testing, which can include:
- The issue type and icon:
- Red indicates an error
- Yellow indicates a warning
- Green indicates that testing found no issues
- The number of devices the issue was detected on
- The stack trace associated with the issue
- The relevant API (if applicable)
- The number of times the issue was detected during testing (if applicable)
Next to each issue, you can select Show more for granular details about the issue, such as the device's name, screen size, Android version, RAM, application binary interface (ABI), and locale. You can select each device model to see the device specifications, view a screenshot and video from testing, demo loop output, and stack traces (which you can also download). Be advised that the availability of these details may vary.
Note: Since crashes found while generating a pre-launch report come from test devices, they don’t affect your crash statistics.
View test devices without issues
At the bottom of the Stability tab, you can view the Test devices without issues table to see information about tests that did not turn up any issues.
On each row, you'll see the name of the testing device, the device's Android version, and an icon showing whether your app had any testing issues.
If your app is using one or more interfaces that aren’t in the public Android SDK (often called “unsupported” or “non-SDK interfaces”), you’ll see errors and warnings listed on your pre-launch report’s Overview and Stability tabs.
View individual issues
To identify the unsupported interfaces that are being used, click the View issues links that are next to “OS compatibility” errors and warnings in your pre-launch report. To see where a given interface was called in your app, click the down arrow next to it to view stack traces. A single interface could be called multiple times in a single test.
Unsupported interfaces are categorized by severity. To avoid stability issues, it’s best to stop using unsupported interfaces entirely, but you can use the categories to help you prioritize which issues to address first.
Here’s the suggested order of priority:
- Restricted: Interfaces that will break on some or all versions of Android.
- Unsupported but with restriction imminent: Interfaces that are not guaranteed to behave that will be restricted in an upcoming Android release.
- Unsupported, restriction not imminent: Interfaces that are not guaranteed to behave.
Note: Within each category, the interfaces are ordered by frequency, which may also help you prioritize which issues to address first.
For each device model, the performance test summary includes the following metrics:
- Average frames per second: Average rate at which frames are displayed.
- Note: Average frames per second data is only available for tests using game loops.
- Average CPU: Percentage of average CPU usage by your app on the specific device model.
- Average network sent: Average number of bytes per second sent by your app over a network connection on the specific device model.
- Average network received: Average number of bytes per second received by your app over a network connection on the specific device model.
- Average memory: Average memory used within your app over the selected time period on the specific device model.
Note: Test devices running some older versions of Android may not be able to generate performance data.
View individual reports
Select each device model to see the device specifications, performance statistics, performance over time, and view a screenshot and video from testing. You can also see a graph and recording of each metric plotted over time throughout the test.
For example, you can view your app's CPU percentage as the test progresses. If you notice a CPU spike, review the action the crawler took at that time to help resolve the problem.
Note that the availability of these details may vary.
Each accessibility test summary includes the number of accessibility errors, warnings, and minor issues found during testing, separated into the following categories:
- Content labeling: Elements in your app that are labelled incorrectly for screen readers.
- Touch target size: Elements in your app that don't meet the recommended touch target size.
- Implementation: Layout issues that can make your app difficult to use for users with motor impairments.
- Low contrast: Low contrast color issues in your app.
View reports by category
You can scroll below the summary at the top of the Accessibility tab to see categorized sections with screen clusters that identify where accessibility issues were found in your app.
- If any errors were identified, you’ll see a red icon.
- If any warnings were identified, you’ll see a yellow icon.
- If only minor issues were identified, you’ll see a blue icon.
- If no issues were identified, you’ll see a green check mark.
View individual issues
You can select a screen cluster to see example screenshots with corresponding device model names, operating systems, screen sizes, screen densities, and languages, along with a recommendation.
Improve your app's accessibility
- Learn how to use Accessibility Scanner to identify accessibility suggestions.
- View documentation on Android accessibility on the Android developers site.
Your screenshots test summary provides:
- Images that show how your app appears across test devices in different languages.
- Metadata about the tested devices (including the model name, Android version, language, screen resolution, and DPI).
- The number of devices with screenshots.
- The number of devices that couldn't be tested with your Android App Bundle:
- Devices unavailable: Your app bundle is compatible with these devices but there was an issue during testing. If your test had any unavailable devices, you might want to upload another app bundle and test again.
- Devices incompatible: Your app bundle is incompatible with certain test devices. If you test again, you won't receive results for any incompatible devices.
Note: If you're running a test using demo loops, you won't see any data on the Screenshots tab.
Ways to view screenshots
You can group screenshots test results using the Group by picker near the top right of the Screenshots tab. There are two ways to group your screenshots:
- Screen clusters: Select Screen clusters to see how similar screenshots display across different devices. With this view, the pre-launch report groups images together based on the elements or widgets on a screen. Screen clusters is selected by default.
- Devices: Select Devices to see all the screenshots associated with a specific device. With this view, you can see screenshots taken in chronological order during a test.
You can select a screenshot to see the device specifications and additional information.
Language preferences
To view screenshots from specific languages, you can set up language preferences in the Settings tab.
Each test summary includes the name and description of any security vulnerabilities found in your app bundle.
Note: We recommend you take action on any security vulnerabilities that are listed before publishing your app bundle to production.
Create a custom test with Firebase Test Lab
If your app or game requires further specialized testing, you can consider using Firebase Test Lab. After creating your Firebase project, you can select your device type from many more devices and testing methods to create custom tests. You can then run and view the custom test results in the Firebase console. The first 5-15 tests you run per day are free.
Related content
- Learn more about how you can use a pre-launch report to identify issues in Play Academy.