When developers encounter bugs or crashes, the most challenging thing is that they can't always reproduce the issue on their end. Their end users are not always expressive enough to explain how they encountered a bug, and this is where Instabug's User Steps feature can help. This feature allows developers to reproduce bugs and then fix them faster.
Let's explore more details about what we capture, how the user steps appear on the dashboard, and how to use Repro Steps.
What do User Steps capture?
Instabug tracks UI Interactions, starting with the application's launch and continuing as it runs, both in the background and foreground. You'll receive a list of UI elements the user pressed or swiped before the bug occurred.
This will tell you exactly how to reproduce the bug or crash that has been reported. User steps also capture most forms of events, including tap, force touch, long press, scroll, swipe, pinch, motion, application, or view.
The way user steps are reported makes them easy to read; they're formatted straightforwardly. The format varies from platform to platform, which is explained in more detail for iOS and Android.
Next, let's see how to view the user steps in Bug Reporting and Crash Reporting.
Where can I find User Steps in my bug reports?
You can just navigate from your dashboard to the bug reports page (use the left navigation bar).
You can open any bug from the bugs list to see its details.
You can scroll down until you find the logging section to filter by user steps.
Where can I find User Steps in my crash reports?
Navigate from the dashboard to the crash reports page (using the left navigation bar).
You can open any crash from the crashes list to view its details.
From the crash details page, click the "Occurrences" button.
Scroll down until you find the logs section, where you can filter by user steps.
Filtering the User Steps
You can also filter the user steps based on events. Just select from among the filtering options in the logs section.
What are Visual Repro Steps?
For Bug Reporting and Crash Reporting, you can check the visual representation of the user steps by clicking the "Repro Steps" button. This will display the steps the user took while in a specific view. All the interactions in this view are grouped together until the user navigates away from the view.
Private Views:
You can easily mark any view containing sensitive information, like payment details, as private.
Any private view will automatically appear with a black overlay covering it in any screenshot.
Auto Masking:
This feature automatically masks sensitive data when screenshots are captured while protecting the user's privacy. This affects both Bug and Crash Reporting.
You can mask text fields, labels, media, or a mix of them.
ℹ️ For Crash Reporting, visual Repro Steps are disabled by default.
If you'd like to enable them, you can contact our support team using the chat bubble at the bottom right corner of your dashboard.
It's worth mentioning that all of this is done without adding a single line of code!
Please see our documentation (iOS, Android, React Native) for more details and instructions on how to enable or disable user steps.
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Now that you've reviewed the User Steps and Visual Repro Steps, you might want to review the other log types we send with each report: network logs, Instabug logs, console logs, and user events.