Setting Up Firebase Crashlytics for Android App Logs

Handling crashes in an Android application is crucial for providing a smooth and reliable user experience. Without proper crash logging, diagnosing issues becomes difficult, leading to frustrated users and poor app performance. Firebase Crashlytics is a real-time crash reporting tool that helps developers track, analyze, and resolve crashes efficiently. This guide will walk through the setup of Firebase Crashlytics in an Android app for seamless crash logs collection and troubleshooting.

What is Firebase Crashlytics and How Does It Work?

🔹 Firebase Crashlytics is a lightweight real-time crash reporting tool that provides detailed stack traces and crash analytics to help developers fix app issues.
🔹 It captures non-fatal errors, fatal crashes, and performance issues, enabling developers to prioritize critical bugs.
🔹 It automatically groups crashes based on similarity, making it easy to identify high-impact issues.
🔹 Firebase Crashlytics supports custom logs, crash-free user metrics, and crash frequency tracking for improved debugging.

By integrating Firebase Crashlytics in an Android app, developers can monitor, analyze, and fix crashes effectively.

How to Set Up Firebase Crashlytics in an Android App?

Before setting up Firebase Crashlytics, ensure that Android Studio is installed and Firebase is added to the project.

1. Add Firebase to the Android Project

To start using Firebase Crashlytics, open the Firebase Console and create a new project. In Android Studio, integrate Firebase using Google Services:

classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.3.10'

Apply the Google Services plugin in app/build.gradle:

apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services'

Sync the project to apply changes.

2. Add Firebase Crashlytics Dependency

To integrate Firebase Crashlytics, add the necessary dependencies in app/build.gradle:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-crashlytics:18.2.9'
    implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics:21.1.1'
}

Sync the Gradle files to download the dependencies.

3. Enable Crashlytics in Firebase Console

In the Firebase Console, navigate to Crashlytics under your project and enable crash reporting. If the option isn’t visible, ensure that Firebase Analytics is enabled, as Crashlytics depends on it.

import com.google.firebase.crashlytics.FirebaseCrashlytics;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        FirebaseCrashlytics crashlytics = FirebaseCrashlytics.getInstance();
        crashlytics.log("Crashlytics initialized");
    }
}

Button crashButton = findViewById(R.id.crashButton);
crashButton.setOnClickListener(v -> {
    throw new RuntimeException("Test crash for Firebase Crashlytics");
});

FirebaseCrashlytics.getInstance().log("User tapped login button");

try {
    int result = 10 / 0;
} catch (Exception e) {
    FirebaseCrashlytics.getInstance().recordException(e);
}

FirebaseCrashlytics.getInstance().setUserId("user_12345");

gradle wrapper --gradle-version 7.3

apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services'