App on TestFlight crashes, but no Crash Report is being recorded

Question

vpa-digital OP

Created Mar ’22

Replies 2

Boosts 2

Views 3.6k

Participants 1

tldr:

Our app is randomly crashing on startup (about 1 every 10 times) but no Crash Report alert is being shown on screen nor sent to the Crash Logs tab on TestFlight. The app just simply opens and immediately closes with no apparent reason. No logs of the crash are kept inside Settings -> Privacy -> Analytics & Improvements -> Analytics Data.
On the iPhone, the options Share iPhone Analytics and Share With App Developers are checked ( Settings -> Privacy -> Analytics & Improvements).
No memory leaks detected using the Instruments app.

More detailed explanation:

Out of 6 iPhones used for testing, only 1 iPhone is presenting the crash. It's an iPhone 11 iOS 15.4 and no one has been able to replicate the crash using the other iPhones. We have an iPhone SE (2020) and an iPhone 12 Pro Max both with iOS 15.4, but we haven't been able to replicate the bug.

The steps to reproduce the bug are these:

Open the app, switch views, then force-close it (swipe up the app in the App Switcher)
Quickly open the app again, switch views and force-close it again.
Repeat the previous step and in about the 10th iteration, the app will load and immediately close (crash)

I know that this the most unlikely scenario possible, but the company won't let pass the app to production until the cause of the crash is identified.

Specific questions:

Any idea how can we obtain a crash log in this situation?
How possible is the scenario where NOT the app, but the OS or the phone itself is the responsible for the crash? How can we prove that this is the case?
Is there any scenario where an App on TestFlight crashes without showing the crash dialog and without sending a crash record to the developer (Obviously assuming that you previously agreed to do it on the Privacy settings)?
How does TestFlight defines and handles crashes? Under those parameters and definitions, can this behavior be considered a crash?
Any idea of what can be happening?

Thank you very much.

Boost

Answer 1

vpa-digital OP

Mar ’22

Update:

I was finally able to reproduce the bug/phenomenon and found out it had nothing to do with our app.

To reproduce it, I lowered the battery on my iPhone and left several apps open to ensure that the memory was being used as in a real life situation. When I did so, all apps under fast force-close and open repetition crashed on startup

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Answer 2

vpa-digital OP

Mar ’22

Update:

I was finally able to reproduce the bug/phenomenon and found out it had nothing to do with our app.

To reproduce it, I lowered the battery on my iPhone and left several apps open to ensure that the memory was being used as in a real life situation. When I did so, all apps under fast force-close and open repetition crashed on startup (as shown in the next video).

https://youtu.be/AFgeDtRe0gY

Note: The video was taken using an iPhone 12 Pro Max iOS 15.4, I couldn't reproduce the behavior on an iPhone SE (2020) iOS 15.4 that I have with me, my theory is that because of the home button I wasn't able to be as fast as it is needed to get the buggy behavior? 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️

New questions:

Is this behavior some kind of OS bug or is it intentional?
Is it ok to tell our app's stakeholders that as long as no crash notifications/logs are shown, if the app suddenly closes, it can not be considered a crash but rather a situation in which an exogenous agent is taking over control (like in this case)?

Thank you very much.

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