Google Play warns users when an app is full of problems

by James · March 4, 2023

What you need to know

Users have started seeing a new Google Play warning about apps with performance issues.
This alert will show you if other owners with Android models similar to yours have experienced rash issues with an app.
If an app has a crash rate above 8% on a particular phone model, all owners of the phone will see a warning to potentially distract them until it is resolved.

It looks like Google has gone the extra mile to warn its users about apps that simply don’t restrict it.

Mishaal Rahman he tweeted about the appearance of this new warning about apps that might crash on your phone (via Android Police). The new warning to users is based on data that Google has collected about an app’s technical performance on devices like yours.

Moreover, it seems that Google was already planning to implement this new warning system in the Play Store in October. According to a post on the Android Developers Blog, Google’s quality band by phone model was introduced because some apps worked perfectly on some Android models but not on others. This created a “misbehavior threshold” that Google hopes developers will keep their apps below.

The threshold for user-perceived crash rate and user-perceived ANR rate was 8%. Anything above that will trigger a warning about the app in the Play Store, which has started appearing for some users.

Some users have reported that Google Play tells them that “recent data from similar devices indicates that this app may stop working on your device.” I haven’t seen one before, so I think it might be relatively new. Screenshot credits: Felixlix45 on Telegram: pic.twitter.com/fdGW96xyCfMarch 2, 2023

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Frustrating apps are never a good thing to use, and it looks like Google wants to rid its store of any such nonsense. It also gives the user a chance to decide if they want to download an app, as they will have this useful information in advance.

Google has also stated that it will limit the appearance of a bad app in certain discovery stages if it has been given a technical warning.

That said, hopefully app developers will iron out any issues before they cross the small 1% crash rate seen by users across all Android devices. Google has given developers a Play Console tool to track the basic vitals of the app and show areas that need improvement in the next patch.

Holding the developer responsible for the product placed in the Play Store is becoming a new habit. In July 2022, Google replaced the old permission list (before it said it would return) with the Data Security section. It’s a way to be completely transparent to the user about what data is taken and how it’s used – even though the amount of information provided is still up to the developer.