Android: the Play Store warns you if an application is likely to crash on your smartphone

The Play Store warns you if an application tends to crash on devices that share the same technical configuration as yours.

Can your mobile device run this application in good conditions? The Play Store displays an alert message when a user tries to install an app prone to bugs and crashes, reports Mishaal Rahman. “Recent data from similar devices shows that this app may not work properly on your device”reads in red letters under the green install button.

This feature had been quietly announced in October 2022 on the Android Developers Blog and its rollout started from November 30, 2022. It seems that this one has accelerated in the last few weeks. If you try to install a badly optimized application from the Play Store, or one that requires a lot of resources when your mobile is not powerful enough, you may therefore see this message displayed.

An additional technical constraint for developers

“Technical quality may vary from device to device”explains Google to application developers to make them understand how this new option works. “For example, an application may be stable and smooth on one phone model, but not on another. To account for this, we are introducing a new bad behavior threshold that is evaluated per phone model. At launch, this threshold will be set at 8% for the crash rate perceived by the user and the ANR rate (note: the error message ‘the application is not responding’) perceived by the user”.

This means that beyond these 8%, the performance of an app is considered abnormally poor for a specific model of smartphone or tablet. This rate is much lower for all smartphones, since it is set at 1.09% for crashes and 0.47% for errors “app not responding”.

“If your title exceeds the misbehavior threshold for a given phone model, Google Play may reduce the visibility of your title to users of that phone model. For example, we may exclude the title of certain recommendation and discovery spaces. In some cases, we’ll display a warning on your Play Store listing to let users know that your app may not work properly on their phone., says Google. We are now warned, and the developers too.

Source: Android Developers Blog