Submitting useful bug reports
First, thank you many times over for taking the time to file a bug. For the report to be most effective, we've noticed the following characteristics help us get to a solution the fastest.
Title: Signal messages jiggle in conversation list
I have:
- searched open and closed issues for duplicates
- read https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/wiki/Submitting-useful-bug-reports
Bug description
Everytime there's a food commercial my messages start jiggling.
Steps to reproduce:
- Open the main conversation list
- A commercial about food comes on the television in the other room
- My Signal messages jiggle in the conversation list for a couple seconds
Screenshots:
Device info:
Model: LG Nexus 4
Android version: stock Android 5.1.1
Signal version: 3.12.0
App state:
Signal messages and calls registered, SMS disabled, passphrase enabled
Link to debug log:
Before submitting a new issue please search if someone has already opened an issue about the same topic. Don't forget to search for both open and closed issues as GitHub only searches for open issues by default.
If the issue you are searching for is very general and the search keywords are very common it's possible to get too many results. For example if you would like to find an issue about searching strings within your conversations, you could try a search with these keywords is:issue message search. That returns close to a hundred issues which is way too many. To narrow down your search you could refine it by looking only into the titles like this is:issue in:title message search. For more information about search parameters have a look at GitHub's Searching issues guide. One thing to be noted though is that GitHub's search is far from perfect. Even if you know all the parameters it has some big draw backs, e.g. it does not recognize that message and messages are basically the same thing.
A good title sums the issue in a few words and makes it easily searchable. There's no need to use tags such as "[Feature]" in the titles. Speaking of search: did you try searching duplicate issues by using your title as search keywords?
To fix an issue the developers need to see the bug themselves. Try to find the exact conditions and steps that make the bug happen and then write them down on your issue report. Following your steps the developers can hopefully recreate the bug on their own device and fix it.
Debug log is like a history which tells what Signal was doing while it was running. If you capture a debug log immediately after the bug has happened the developers can use the log to see exactly what was going on in your installation of Signal. Even in the case where you know the exact steps that cause the bug it doesn't guarantee that the same steps cause the bug on the developer's device. Thus it is always helpful to add a debug log to your issue report.
- Immediately after the bug has happened go to Signal's Settings -> Advanced -> Submit debug log
- Tap Submit to send the debug log to GitHub as an anonymous public log
- You will see a pop-up dialog with the link to your debug log
- Copy the link and paste it to your issue report
Note: If you are using a passphrase and the bug appears before you can successfully unlock the app you can capture a debug log directly via the menu in the passphrase screen. If you cannot access any of Signal's debug log menus please see how to capture debug logs with adb below.
Debug logs captured within Signal are stripped from personal information. However please note that the last two digits of your and your contacts phone numbers may be visible in the logs. E.g. +1 555 3455 will show as +******55 in the log. This is to help differentiate the contacts when analysing a log.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand lines of debug logs (this doesn't mean that you shouldn't add a debug log too :). If the problem is visual and difficult to describe a screenshot can come a long way. Different Android vendors have different ways of taking screenshots. Please check how to do it on your specific device. Usually it's a combination of pressing the volume buttons and power button at the same time.
Please note that by default Signal disables taking screenshots. To enable them go to Settings -> Privacy and disable Screen security.
- What's your device?
- What Android version is it running?
- What version of Signal do you have?
- What are the relevant preferences that you have set that may be related to the issue? Some examples:
- Signal messages and calls registered
- MMS settings
- Passphrase
- Theme
- Message trimming
- If this is a bug involving a second party, what's their device/app info and app state?
Congratulations! You are done. You have achieved the badge: Creator of Glorious Bug Reports!✨
Now you can submit your report. Thanks for your help!
Here are some advanced ways to get more information from your device.
adb logcatPlease note that capturing raw log data with adb may expose private information such as your contacts' phone numbers.
adb shell /system/bin/screencap -p /sdcard/screencap.png && adb pull /sdcard/screencap.pngA small video or gif can be helpful if the problem is visual and difficult to describe.
adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/screenrecord.mp4Then pull it from the device.
adb pull /sdcard/screenrecord.mp4If you have ffmpeg and imagemagick, you can quickly convert to gif with:
ffmpeg -i screenrecord.mp4 -r 10 screenrecord%05d.png
convert screenrecord*.png screenrecord.gif
rm screenrecord*.pngmkdir tmpScreens
cd tmpScreens
# perform as many screenshots as you need to string together the animated gif:
adb shell screencap -p | perl -pe "s/\x0D\x0A/\x0A/g" > adb-screenshot-`date +%s`.png
convert -delay 70 -loop 0 adb-screenshot-*.png anim.gif