At Firebase, our mission is to help mobile app teams succeed, which means having the capabilities to support companies and teams of all sizes and complexity. In the last couple of years, we've matured significantly, from a realtime database to a full mobile app development platform. Firebase is built on top of Google Cloud, so you get all the technical scale, enterprise-grade access control and management, and machine learning strength that underpins many of Google's products. Today, we're excited to share a few new products and features that will help you build better apps, improve your app quality, and grow your business.

Growing your business

Firebase has a number of products to help you engage with your users and grow your business, from machine learning powered targeting with Firebase Predictions, to app optimization without republishing via Remote Config, to re-engaging lapsed users with Cloud Messaging. Today we're adding a new product, Firebase In-App Messaging, to round out the tools available for growing your user base, as well as making improvements to a couple of our existing products.

Introducing Firebase In App Messaging

Notifications are a great way to bring users back into your app. But how do you ensure your users are interacting with your app in the right, intended way instead of fumbling between screens without taking any meaningful action? How do you guide them through your app experience?

Today, we're launching Firebase In-App Messaging to help you guide app users who are actively using your app by sending them targeted and contextual messages. Now, you'll be able to communicate with your most valuable users - the ones already interacting with your app - and deepen engagement with them by surfacing relevant information, offers, and tips as they use your app!

Messages can be customized by format, color, and CTA, allowing you to keep your messages on brand with your app. In-App Messaging is also integrated with Google Analytics for Firebase and Firebase Predictions, making it easy for you to target messages based on user profile data like app version, current behavior like a button click, or predicted future behavior like risk of churning. In-App Messaging is starting to roll out today; check out our documentation for more detail.

Better reporting for the FCM console and APIs

The Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) console and APIs let you send notifications and data messages to your users on iOS, Android, and web, but understanding how your notifications are performing across all these different platforms is hard. The new FCM reporting dashboard gives teams a central place to view key messaging stats like sends, impressions, and opens, so they can easily understand how their messages are performing. In addition to aggregating all these statistics, the reporting dashboard also gives you insight into your API sends from the console, for the first time.

Developers can use this information to monitor the health of their notification functionality, such as a dip in sends after the release of a new update, as well as use insights on notification sends and opens to improve notification strategy, like monitoring how the title of a notification impacts open rates. The FCM reporting dashboard allows you to filter sends by date, platform (iOS or Android), and type (data message or notification), making it easy to find the data you're looking for.

Change history for Remote Config

Previously, if you wanted to check what Remote Config values you've used in the past, you had to keep track manually. In one-person teams this is a hassle, but for large teams, where lots of different developers could be changing the project's Remote Config at once, this was nearly impossible.

Today, we are happy to announce that we're adding change history to Remote Config. Firebase saves 300 versions of a project's Remote Config for up to 90 days. You'll be able to see how parameters and conditions have changed over time and if you ever want to roll back to a previous version, all you have to do is click the rollback button.

We're beginning to roll out change history for Remote Config today and it will be fully available to all projects in a couple of days. Click here to see the technical documentation.

Change history in Remote Config

Improving app quality

When the Fabric team joined Firebase last year, we were very excited to learn from their expertise in building tools for crash reporting and debugging. Over the last 18 months, we've made big steps to make Firebase into a platform that you can use to improve your app quality, including bringing Fabric's Crashlytics to Firebase. Today, we're excited to announce a number of improvements to Crashlytics, that help it integrate better with existing tools that developer teams use.

Crashlytics integrations to boost your productivity

We've heard from you that you rely on a variety of different tools to make your business successful. We want to meet you where you're already working and empower you to use the best tool for the job. That's why we're launching a couple of new integrations for Firebase Crashlytics.

First of all, you'll now be able to export your Crashlytics data from Firebase to BigQuery, allowing you to run your own analysis on deobfuscated crash reports, including any metadata such as custom keys and values, logs, and user IDs. You can then visualize data and view trends with Data Studio or any other business analytics tool you use. You'll also be able to take ownership of your data in BigQuery by setting your own retention and deletion policies.

Secondly, we're launching an integration with Jira Software that allows you to create Jira issues based on crashes reported in Firebase. Combined with the existing integration with Slack, your team can now track the crashes they are working on, with tools they already use. The Jira integration will be rolling out over the coming weeks and if you want to manage your Firebase integrations now, you can visit the settings tab in the console.

Building better apps

Core to Firebase's DNA are a set of products that help developers like you build mobile backend infrastructure quickly and easily. After all, it began with a Realtime Database. We've been working closely with Google Cloud Platform to build a next generation of serverless backend tools, like Cloud Firestore and Cloud Functions, and we're continuing to improve on those products. We're also launching a couple of enhancements to Firebase Hosting that we hope will help you build websites more efficiently.

An even more reliable and scalable serverless backend

A few weeks ago at Cloud Next 2018, we introduced a number of improvements to Cloud Firestore and Cloud Functions for Firebase. Cloud Firestore now lets you scale your database up to 10,000 writes per second and 1 million concurrent users to handle any surges in traffic. Cloud Functions is now GA and ready for production use -- with predictable service guaranteed by an SLA. If you're looking to build your infrastructure in certain parts of the world, both Cloud Firestore and Cloud Functions will be supporting new regions in Europe and Asia over the next few months.

Host and update multiple websites with ease

Another piece of feedback we've consistently heard is that you don't always have a one-to-one relationship between Firebase projects and hosted websites. Over the next couple weeks, we'll be rolling out an improvement to Firebase Hosting that allows you to host multiple websites within one project.

Additionally, when pushing an update to a site, the Firebase CLI (from v4.1.0) now only uploads the files that have changed between releases. This dramatically speeds up the process, letting you work more efficiently.

A more sophisticated console

The Project Overview page in the console has received a major update, bringing together data from all different parts of Firebase to give you a single view into the health of your app, services and business. In addition to the analytics and crash data that's always been present you can now view performance issues, notification and A/B test status, and the usage and health data for other Firebase services like Functions, Hosting, and Storage, among others.

You'll also notice that the Latest Release section of the console will now have live data. This was one of our top requested improvements to analytics in the console and we're excited to be able to provide it for you.

All of these improvements are beginning to roll out today and will be available to everybody within a couple of weeks.

Join us at the Firebase Summit

Thank you, as always, for being a part of the Firebase community. We strive to create a community that is welcoming to developers of all backgrounds and companies of all levels of sophistication. Your feedback and questions are invaluable in shaping the future of Firebase, so, as always, you can find us via any of our support channels.

If you'd like to meet the team in person, please join us at the annual Firebase Summit on October 29th in Prague, Czech Republic for a day full of technical sessions, hands-on instructor-led codelabs, and another round of new updates. Hope to see you there!

When the folks at Fabric joined Firebase earlier this year, we aligned around a common mission: provide developers like you with a platform that solves common problems across the app development lifecycle, so you can focus on building an awesome user experience.

One area — among many — where Fabric excelled was in its console and dashboards. We've been hard at work for the last several months, working with them to bring together the best parts of Fabric and Firebase. Today, we're excited to share some improvements to the Firebase console.

Redesigned navigation

We started by redesigning the navigation, to more accurately reflect the way your team works. We've clustered Firebase products into four groups: Develop, Stability, Analytics, and Grow. All of the products that you're used to seeing in the Firebase console are still there; we've simply reorganized them in a way that makes it simpler to navigate between them as you use more products across the Firebase platform.

New Project Home

We've also redesigned the Project Home screen in the Firebase console to bring a few important metrics front and center. Now, when you first open a project in Firebase, you'll see four key metrics: 30-day crash-free user rate, 30-day crashes, daily active users, and monthly active users, along with graphs that displays these trends over time. In research, we found that the vast majority of the time, developers are looking for one of those four metrics, so we made them easily accessible from the Project Home landing page.

Latest Release

Another well-loved Fabric console feature is the Latest Release section. This dashboard gives you all the most important insights from your most recent app release, so you can get a quick snapshot of what's going well and what might need to be rolled back. We've brought this section into the redesigned Firebase Console; you'll find it under the Analytics section of the navigation bar.

Updated Analytics dashboard

Starting today, you'll also see an Analytics dashboard that is organized into simple cards underneath an easy to understand question. Organizing data around jargon like "DAUs" or "retention cohorts" is difficult to navigate, so we've restructured the dashboard around questions you have about your app, like "where are my users engaged?" Or "how well do I retain users?" Our research confirmed that 90% of users preferred this design and we hope you find it helpful too!

Realtime information

Another thing we've learned from our friends at Fabric and heard from all of you is that having information in realtime is critical. Whether you're tracking a new app release or monitoring the status of a bug fix, you need to understand what's happening in your app in realtime, so you can make changes and prioritize work accordingly.

To help with this, we've added realtime data on crashes and active users to a card that you'll see in the new Analytics dashboard, as well as the Latest Release section of the console. This is just the first step and, over time, we plan to make realtime data more prevalent across the rest of the Firebase console.

As always, you can contact us at https://firebase.google.com/support/ with feedback and questions. Happy building!

For many years, developers and app teams have relied on Crashlytics to improve their app stability. By now, you're probably familiar with the main parts of the Crashlytics UI; perhaps you even glance at crash-free users, crash-free sessions, and the issues list multiple times a day (you wouldn't be the only one!).

In this post, we want to share 7 pro-tips that will help you get even more value out of Crashlytics, which is now part of the new Fabric dashboard, so you can track, prioritize, and solve issues faster.

1. Speed up your troubleshooting by checking out crash insights

In July, we officially released crash insights out of beta. Crash insights helps you understand your crashes better by giving you more context and clarity on why those crashes occurred. When you see a green lightning bolt appear next to an issue in your issues list, click on it to see potential root causes and troubleshooting resources.

2. Mark resolved issues as "closed" to track regressions

Debugging and troubleshooting crashes is time-consuming, hard work. As developers ourselves, we understand the urge to sign-off and return to more exciting tasks (like building new app features) as soon you resolve a pesky issue - but don't forget to mark this issue as "closed" in Crashlytics! When you formally close out an issue, you get enhanced visibility into that issue's lifecycle through regression detection. Regression detection alerts you when a previously closed issue reoccurs in a new app version, which is a signal that something else may be awry and you should pay close attention to it.

3. Close and lock issues you want to ignore and declutter your issue list

As a general rule of thumb, you should close issues so you can monitor regression. However, you can also close and lock issues that you don't want to be notified about because you're unlikely to fix or prioritize them. These could be low-impact, obscure bugs or issues that are beyond your control because the problem isn't in your code. To keep these issues out of view and declutter your Crashlytics charts, you can close and lock them. By taking advantage of this "ignore functionality", you can fine tune your stability page so only critical information that needs action bubbles up to the top.

4. Use wildcard builds as a shortcut for adding build versions manually

Sometimes, you may have multiple builds of the same version. These build versions start with the same number, but the tail end contains a unique identifier (such as 9.12 (123), 9.12 (124), 9.12 (125), etc). If you want to see crashes for all of these versions, don't manually type them into the search bar. Instead, use a wildcard to group similar versions together much faster. You can do this by simply adding a star (aka. an asterisk) at the end of your version prefix (i.e. 9.12*). For example, if you use APK Splits on Android, a wildcard build will quickly show you crashes for the combined set of builds.

5. Pin your most important builds to keep them front and center

As a developer, you probably deploy a handful of builds each day. As a development team, that number can shoot up to tens or hundreds of builds. The speed and agility with which mobile teams ship is impressive and awesome. But you know what's not awesome? Wasting time having to comb through your numerous builds to find the one (or two, or three, etc.) that matter the most. That's why Crashlytics allows you to "pin" key builds so that they appear at the top of your builds list. Pinned builds allow you to find your most important builds faster and keep them front and center, for as long as you need. Plus, this feature makes it easier to collaborate with your teammates on fixing crashes because pinned builds will automatically appear at the top of their builds list too.

6. Pay attention to velocity alerts to stay informed about critical stability issues

Stability issues can pop up anytime - even when you're away from your workstation. Crashlytics intelligently monitors your builds to check if one issue has caused a statistically significant number of crashes. If so, we'll let you know if you need to ship a hot fix of your app via a velocity alert. Velocity alerts are proactive alerts that appear right in your crash reporting dashboard when an issue suddenly increases in severity or impact. We'll send you an email too, but you should also install the Fabric mobile app, which will send you a push notification so you can stay in the loop even on the go. Keep an eye out for velocity alerts and you'll never miss a critical crash, no matter where you are!

7. Use logs, keys, and non-fatals in the right scenarios

The Crashlytics SDK lets you instrument logs, keys, non-fatals, and custom events, which provide additional information and context on why a crash occurred and what happened leading up to it. However, logs, keys, non-fatals, and custom events are designed to track different things so let's review the right way to use them.

Logs: You should instrument logs to gather important information about user activity before a crash. This could be user behavior (ex. user went to download screen, clicked on download button) to details about the user's action (ex. image downloaded, image downloaded from). Basically, logs are breadcrumbs that show you what happened prior to a crash. When a crash occurs, we take the contents of the log and attach it to the crash to help you debug faster. Here are instructions for instrumenting logs for iOS, Android, and Unity apps.

Keys: Keys are key value pairs, which provide a snapshot of information at one point in time. Unlike logs, which record a timeline of activity, keys record the last known value and change over time. Since keys are overwritten, you should use keys for something that you would only want the last known value for. For example, use keys to track the last level a user completed, the last step a user completed in a wizard, what image the user looked at last, and what the last custom settings configuration was. Keys are also helpful in providing a summary or "roll-up" of information. For instance, if your log shows "login, retry, retry, retry" your key would show "retry count: 3." To set up keys, follow these instructions for iOS, Android, and Unity apps.

Non-fatals: While Crashlytics captures crashes automatically, you can also record non-fatal events. Non-fatal events mean that your app is experiencing an error, but not actually crashing.

For example, a good scenario to log a non-fatal is if your app has deep links, but fails to navigate to them. A broken link isn't something that will necessarily crash your app, but it's something you'd want to track so you can fix the link. A bad scenario to log a non-fatal is if an image fails to load in your app due to a network failure because this isn't actionable or specific.

You should set up non-fatal events for something you want the stack trace for so you can triage and troubleshoot the issue.

If you simply want to count the number of times something happens (and don't need the stack trace), we'd recommend checking out custom events.

These 7 tips will help you get the most out of Crashlytics. If you have other pro-tips that have helped you improve your app stability with Crashlytics, tweet them at us! We can't wait to learn more about how you use Crashlytics.

Get Crashlytics

Originally Posted by David Ohayon, Software Engineer on the Fabric Blog

Every mobile developer needs to take app screenshots in order to have their app listed on the app stores. Like a book cover, screenshots are crucial in depicting the best parts of your app and convincing potential users to download it.

Unfortunately, generating app screenshots is a huge pain because they take a ton of time, especially if your app supports different locales and languages. For example, if you need to take 5 screenshots for your app store listing - but your app supports 20 languages for 6 devices - you'll manually have to take 600 screenshots (5 x 20 x 6)! It makes us shudder to think how many precious hours that would eat up.

fastlane's snapshot tool automates the process of taking screenshots (in the background) so you can focus on building features users love. Today, we're excited to share that snapshot now supports multiple, concurrent simulators for iOS apps in Xcode 9. Taking screenshots just got even faster because you can now generate screenshots for all of your devices at the same time!

Speeding up screenshots (even more!)

Before Xcode 9, only one simulator could be running at a time, which means that you had to run snapshot once for each device you wish to support. While snapshot automated the process of taking screenshots, we wanted to make things even easier.

The launch of Xcode 9 gave us another opportunity to improve snapshot. In Xcode 9, multiple UI tests can run simultaneously, so we added multiple simulator support to snapshot as well. Now, you can take screenshots for all specified devices with a single command, at the same time. This drastically shortens the time it takes to generate your screenshots.

Here's an example:

More exciting updates on the way

fastlane's mission is to save you time by automating the cumbersome tasks of app deployment, even as mobile evolves. That's why we're fully committed to updating the fastlane toolset to take advantage of new releases and features - such as Xcode 9.

And since fastlane is open source, we're so thankful that our community also helps us make fastlane better by building and using plugins. In fact, we now have more user-generated plugins available for you to try than native fastlane actions. We recently reorganized these plugins to make it easier to find the right plugins for your unique needs.

We always strive to anticipate your needs and build our tools to be ready for the future. To start using the new version of snapshot, simply update fastlane and run snapshot as you normally would. If you're taking screenshots manually, check out our guide to start using snapshot (and enjoy the extra free time!). As always, we can't wait to hear what you think!

We've all been in this situation before: you work tirelessly to build a great app, you spend countless hours beta testing and fixing bugs, and you even put together a comprehensive marketing plan in time for your app's launch. Months of anticipation finally culminate when you submit your app to the app store… but instead of celebrating the new release, you find out that your app didn't meet the right criteria for listing so it got rejected 😱.

There's nothing quite as deflating as tripping at the finish line.

App store guidelines can be complicated and hard to remember because they're constantly changing, but developers still need to follow them in order to get their apps approved. Sometimes, these guidelines get overlooked or lost in the shuffle of all the other important pre-launch tasks. To help you avoid unnecessary delays and rejection, we're excited to introduce fastlane precheck for iOS apps! You can count on us to remember the rules so you can submit your app with confidence.

Review your app in seconds to save days of delays

Often, apps get rejected from app stores because of simple, solvable issues with their metadata (such as title, description, changelog, keywords, etc.). Once rejected, you have to resubmit your app and it can take days before it's reviewed again. This wastes time and can throw off your schedule.

Instead of risking rejection or painstakingly auditing your own metadata, you can now use fastlane precheck to save you the time and hassle. fastlane will review your app for the most common causes of rejection 👍.

For example, we'll check your metadata to ensure it follows iOS app store rules such as:

1. No other platforms are mentioned in the description
2. There are no curse words in your copy
3. No placeholder text is left
4. No URLs are broken

If we detect any issues, we'll flag them for you so you can resolve them before you submit your app to the app store. And since fastlane can automatically download your app's metadata, this whole process takes only seconds!

More exciting things ahead

fastlane precheck is the first new tool we've added to our app automation toolkit since joining Google - and we have even more exciting updates planned! Now that we've settled into our new home, we can't wait to move fastlane forward with our passionate community of iOS and Android developers.

In the meantime, install fastlane or update your version of fastlane (just run `fastlane update_fastlane`) to try precheck and submit your app with confidence and peace of mind 🚀.

This post originally appeared on the Fabric blog. fastlane is an app deployment and automation toolset that joined Firebase in January as part of the Fabric acquisition.

It's been an exciting year! Last May, we expanded Firebase into our unified app platform, building on the original backend-as-a-service and adding products to help developers grow their user base, as well as test and monetize their apps. Hearing from developers like Wattpad, who built an app using Firebase in only 3 weeks, makes all the hard work worthwhile.

We're thrilled by the initial response from the community, but we believe our journey is just getting started. Let's talk about some of the enhancements coming to Firebase today.

Integrating with Fabric

In January, we announced that we were welcoming the Fabric team to Firebase. Fabric initially grabbed our attention with their array of products, including the industry-leading crash reporting tool, Crashlytics. As we got to know the team better, we were even more impressed by how closely aligned our missions are: to help developers build better apps and grow successful businesses. Over the last several months, we've been working closely with the Fabric team to bring the best of our platforms together.
We plan to make Crashlytics the primary crash reporting product in Firebase. If you don't already use a crash reporting tool, we recommend you take a look at Crashlytics and see what it can do for you. You can get started by following the Fabric documentation.

Phone authentication comes to Firebase

Phone number authentication has been the biggest request for Firebase Authentication, so we're excited to announce that we've worked with the Fabric Digits team to bring phone auth to our platform. You can now let your users sign in with their phone numbers, in addition to traditional email/password or identity providers like Google or Facebook. This gives you a comprehensive authentication solution no matter who your users are or how they like to log in.
At the same time, the Fabric team will be retiring the Digits name and SDK. If you currently use Digits, over the next couple weeks we'll be rolling out the ability to link your existing Digits account with Firebase and swap in the Firebase SDK for the Digits SDK. Go to the Digits blog to learn more.

Introducing Firebase Performance Monitoring

We recognize that poor app performance and stability are the top reasons for users to leave bad ratings on your app and possibly churn altogether. As part of our effort to help you build better apps, we're pleased to announce the beta launch of Performance Monitoring.
Firebase Performance Monitoring is a new free tool that helps you understand when your user experience is being impacted by poorly performing code or challenging network conditions. You can learn more and get started with Performance Monitoring in the Firebase documentation.

More robust analytics

Analytics has been core to the Firebase platform since we launched last I/O. We know that understanding your users is the number one way to make your app successful, so we're continuing to invest in improving our analytics product.
First off, you may notice that you're starting to see the name "Google Analytics for Firebase" around our documentation. Our analytics solution was built in conjunction with the Google Analytics team, and the reports are available both in the Firebase console and the Google Analytics interface. So, we're renaming Firebase Analytics to Google Analytics for Firebase, to reflect that your app analytics data are shared across both.
For those of you who monetize your app with AdMob, we've started sharing data between the two platforms, helping you understand the true lifetime value (LTV) of your users, from both purchases and AdMob revenue. You'll see these new insights surfaced in the updated Analytics dashboard.
Many of you have also asked for analytics insights into custom events and parameters. Starting today, you can register up to 50 custom event parameters and see their details in your Analytics reports. Learn more about custom parameter reporting.

Firebase for all - iOS, games, and open source

Firebase's mission is to help all developers build better apps. In that spirit, today we're announcing expanded platform and vertical support for Firebase.
First of all, as Swift has become the preferred language for many iOS developers, we've updated our SDK to handle Swift language nuances, making Swift development a native experience on Firebase.
We've also improved Firebase Cloud Messaging by adding support for token-based authentication for APNs, and greatly simplifying the connection and registration logic in the client SDK.
Second, we've heard from our game developer community that one of the most important stats you monitor is frames per second (FPS). So, we've built Game Loop support & FPS monitoring into Test Lab for Android, allowing you to evaluate your game's frame rate before you deploy. Coupled with the addition of Unity plugins and a C++ SDK, which we announced at GDC this year, we think that Firebase is a great option for game developers. To see an example of a game built on top of Firebase, check out our Mecha Hamster app on Github.
Finally, we've taken a big first step towards open sourcing our SDKs. We believe in open source software, not only because transparency is an important goal, but also because we know that the greatest innovation happens when we all collaborate. You can view our new repos on our open sourceproject page and learn more about our decision in this blog post.

Dynamic Hosting with Cloud Functions for Firebase

In March, we launched Cloud Functions for Firebase, which lets you run custom backend code in response to events triggered by Firebase features and HTTP requests. This lets you do things like send a notification when a user signs up or automatically create thumbnails when an image is uploaded to Cloud Storage.
Today, in an effort to better serve our web developer community, we're expanding Firebase Hosting to integrate with Cloud Functions. This means that, in addition to serving static assets for your web app, you can now serve dynamic content, generated by Cloud Functions, through Firebase Hosting. For those of you building progressive web apps, Firebase Hosting + Cloud Functions allows you to go completely server-less. You can learn more by visiting our documentation.

Firebase Alpha program and what's next

Our goal is to build the best developer experience: easy-to-use products, great documentation, and intuitive APIs. And the best resource that we have for improving Firebase is you! Your questions and feedback continuously push us to make Firebase better.
In light of that, we're excited to announce a Firebase Alpha program, where you will have the opportunity to test the cutting edge of our products. Things might not be perfect (in fact, we can almost guarantee they won't be), but by participating in the alpha community, you'll help define the future of Firebase. If you want to get involved, please register your interest in the Firebase Alpha form.
Thank you for your support, enthusiasm, and, most importantly, feedback. The Firebase community is the reason that we've been able to grow and improve our platform at such an incredible pace over the last year. We're excited to continue working with you to build simple, intuitive products for developing apps and growing mobile businesses. To get started with Firebase today, visit our newly redesigned website. We're excited to see what you build!

Heading to WWDC this year? Join us at the Firebase + Fabric party on June 5th as we celebrate with the top iOS developers from around the world.

We’re excited to throw our very first iOS developers party at this year’s conference - co-hosting with our teammates at Fabric who’re also deeply passionate about mobile development. If you’re going to be in town, join us for a night to mingle with other developers, meet engineers and PMs from the Firebase and Fabric team, showcase your latest app, or whatever strikes your mood.

We look forward to hearing about all the cool stuff you’ve been working on.

• When: June 5th, 2017
• Time: 8:00-11:00 p.m.
• Where: Forager Tasting Room & Eatery
• Price: Free (!)

Tickets are limited so request your invite today!

Google I/O is rapidly sneaking up on us. I hope those of you attending have your bags packed by now, and those joining on the live stream have started marking the sessions you want to see. It's quite a lineup.

Personally, I'm looking forward to all the new great Firebase content that we're going to be sharing. I know Todd shared the five I/O sessions he was most looking forward to, but here's a list of some of the sessions that you'll find me at:


What's new in Firebase
I have been calling this our "Firebase keynote" internally. I've been following the rehearsals closely and it's shaping up to be a great overview of everything new that we're announcing for Firebase. It'll also be your essential starting point for all things Firebase at I/O; go to this talk and you'll have a good idea of what other sessions you might want to attend.

The future of Fabric: gaining momentum at Google
What is is like for a startup that joins Google? How do you maintain what made your startup unique, but also make optimal use of the resources available at Google? Will Google keep investing in Fabric and Firebase? And what on earth is Bring Your Pineapple To Work Day? Come to this talk and find out from the folks that started Fabric and Firebase, and the Googler who convinced them to join.

Rewarding for engagement
Building a great app is one thing. But convincing your users to keep using your app is another. Gus and Damien have great experience in this area, and together with some developers using Firebase in their app, they'll show you one approach that was very successful. Then they'll show you how to implement that very same approach yourself using Firebase.

Using Firebase to accelerate app growth
There are many ways to use Firebase to get more users on your app. Firebase's product managers Jumana and Jon are the perfect teachers for this topic. I'll be going to their great session to get a fresh overview of the Firebase features that help with growing your app's user base.

Using Pirate Metrics to grow your user base
Ahoy matey! Who can resist a session about Firebase that's centered around Pirates? I certainly can't. I expect buccaneers, swashbucklers and pirate ships! Or, at the very least, an analytics-focused discussion on how to best acquire and retain users through best practices. It might be less pirate-y, but it's easier to put into a business plan. AARRR….!

Single Codebase, Two Apps with Flutter and Firebase
Sure, maybe you've seen live-coding demos where we've built Android and iOS apps on top of Firebase before. But have you ever seen us do it with one codebase? Using Flutter makes it easy -- and maybe even fun -- to build cross-platform apps, and Emily and Emily will show you how in this session. I'm a sucker for live-coding talks and this is one that won't disappoint.

Great app performance with Firebase
Having a smoothly running, well performing app is critical to ensuring your app's success. With Firebase, this is easy to do, not only during development, but also in production. I've seen Nalin and Ali running around the hallways of the Googleplex all excited about the great things that they'll be sharing in this session. So not only will it be an exciting session, but it's done wonders for their metabolism!

And of course there's one more talk that I won't want to miss: Zero to App. Because missing your own I/O talk would be un-Googley. :-)

These are seven (well, okay, eight) Firebase sessions that I will definitely be attending. If you're not at I/O or just missed them, you can find them on the Firebase YouTube channel at the end of each day!

See you at I/O!

Almost eight months ago, we launched the expansion of Firebase to help developers build high-quality apps, grow their user base, and earn more money across iOS, Android and the Web. We've already seen great adoption of the platform, which brings together the best of Google's core businesses from Cloud to mobile advertising.

Our ultimate goal with Firebase is to free developers from so much of the complexity associated with modern software development, giving them back more time and energy to focus on innovation.

As we work towards that goal, we've continued to improve Firebase, working closely with our user community. We recently introduced major enhancements to many core features, including Firebase Analytics, Test Lab and Cloud Messaging, as well as added support for game developers with a C++ SDK and Unity plug-in.


We're deeply committed to Firebase and are doubling down on our investment to solve developer challenges.

Fabric and Firebase Joining Forces

Today, we're excited to announce that we've signed an agreement to acquire Fabric to continue the great work that Twitter put into the platform. Fabric will join Google's Developer Product Group, working with the Firebase team. Our missions align closely: help developers build better apps and grow their business.

As a popular, trusted tool over many years, we expect that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase and will augment the work that we have already done in this area. While Fabric was built on the foundation of Crashlytics, the Fabric team leveraged its success to launch a broad set of important tools, including Answers and Fastlane. We'll share further details in the coming weeks after we close the deal, as we work closely together with the Fabric team to determine the most efficient ways to further combine our strengths. During the transition period, Digits, the SMS authentication services, will be maintained by Twitter.


The integration of Fabric is part of our larger, long-term effort of delivering a comprehensive suite of features for iOS, Android and mobile Web app development.

This is a great moment for the industry and a unique opportunity to bring the best of Firebase with the best of Fabric. We're committed to making mobile app development seamless, so that developers can focus more of their time on building creative experiences.