Google Play console reporting crashes from unreleased applications

Question

I would like to share a situation I am facing analysing the new features at Google Play console and try to find a solution for it.

As many of you may already know, G

Answer 1

As we are interested in publishing only release applications, we may adopt following strategy to get rid of messing up crash reports :

./build.gradle :

android {
    ...
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "my.app.package"
        ...
    }
    ...
    buildTypes {
        release {
            ...
        }
        debug {
            ...
            applicationIdSuffix ".dev"
        }
    }
...
}

Answer 2

I also faced the same issue.
It shows Crash reports when I go to All applications -> -> Dashboard -> Crashes

But if I go directly to Android Vitals -> ANRs & crashes it doesnt show anything.

Anyway for the first case you can click on 'View details' and select 'Hide' from dropdown menu for each crash type reported.

This is just a temporary fix , but I think Google has to provide proper fix for it.

Answer 3

The Developer Console only reports crashes from published version numbers (either in alpha, beta or production).

So my solution is very simple:

1. After publishing a new version, the first thing I do is increase the versionCode in the manifest. And I only use this version number while developing. This way, no crash is sent to the console.
2. Then, when I'm ready to publish again, I increase the versionCode once more. This way I make sure new crashes will only come from the published version.

EDIT:

Crashes from unpublished versions will still appear on the console under the 'All versions' option. So take this answer as a way to identify and filter those crashes, not to prevent them from being logged.