Crash reporting in Firebase - Commands & Configuration

Introduction

Crash reporting helps you find and fix errors in your app by collecting details about crashes automatically. It saves you time by showing what went wrong without needing users to report issues manually.

When you want to know why your app crashes on users' devices without asking them.

When you need to prioritize fixing bugs based on how often they happen.

When you want to see detailed error logs and device info to understand crashes better.

When you want to improve app stability by tracking crashes after each update.

When you want to monitor crash trends over time to measure app quality.

Commands

Log in to your Firebase account to access your projects and services.

Terminal

firebase login

Expected Output

✔  Success! Logged in as [e-mail]

Initialize Crashlytics in your Firebase project to set up crash reporting.

Terminal

firebase init crashlytics

Expected Output

Crashlytics initialization complete. Follow the instructions to add Crashlytics SDK to your app.

Deploy Crashlytics configuration to Firebase to enable crash reporting for your app.

Terminal

firebase deploy --only crashlytics

Expected Output

✔  Deploy complete!

Project Console: https://console.firebase.google.com/project/my-app/overview

→

--only - Deploy only the specified Firebase service, here Crashlytics.

List recent crash reports collected by Crashlytics to see errors your app encountered.

Terminal

firebase crashlytics:reports:list

Expected Output

Report ID                             Timestamp           Issue Type

123abc456def7890                     2024-06-01 12:34    Fatal Exception

789xyz123uvw4567                     2024-06-01 11:20    ANR

Key Concept

If you remember nothing else from this pattern, remember: Crash reporting automatically collects and shows app crash details so you can fix bugs faster without waiting for user feedback.

Common Mistakes

Not adding the Crashlytics SDK to the app after initializing Crashlytics in Firebase.

Without the SDK, the app cannot send crash data to Firebase, so no reports will appear.

Follow Firebase instructions to add and initialize the Crashlytics SDK in your app code.

Running 'firebase deploy' without specifying '--only crashlytics' after initialization.

This may deploy unrelated services or miss deploying Crashlytics configuration properly.

Use 'firebase deploy --only crashlytics' to deploy only Crashlytics settings.

Ignoring the login step before running Firebase CLI commands.

Commands will fail because Firebase CLI needs authentication to access your project.

Always run 'firebase login' first to authenticate your session.

Summary

Use 'firebase login' to authenticate your Firebase CLI session.

Run 'firebase init crashlytics' to set up Crashlytics in your project.

Deploy Crashlytics configuration with 'firebase deploy --only crashlytics'.

Check crash reports using 'firebase crashlytics:reports:list' to see app errors.