Google Play will automatically offer to update crashing apps

Google announced a new feature that will help you speed up the distribution of app updates and meet the Play Store’s quality bar. On phones and tablets running Android 7.0 (SDK level 24) and higher, the Play Store will prompt users to update your app if it crashes on launch and a more stable version is available. This will reduce the number of crashes that reach users.

In this case, developers do not need to do anything. These new hints don’t require any integration from you and are enabled automatically when Play determines that a newer version of your app has a statistically significant, lower crash rate. What’s more, since the dialog is displayed in the Play Store and not in your app, the update prompt may be shown even if the app crashes when launching.

Play takes into account several thresholds that we adjust over time to achieve the best result. These include:

• User activity level of app version users according to Vitals data to ensure statistical relevance.
• The frequency of crashes while running this version of the application and its newer version.
• The number of times the tooltip can be shown for each version of your app on the device if the user chooses not to update the app.