App Events

Status: Development

This document defines events related to client-side applications (e.g. web apps or mobile apps).

• Click Events
  • Event: app.screen.click
  • Event: app.widget.click
• Crash Event
  • Event: app.crash
• Jank Event
  • Event: app.jank
• Attributes

Click Events

Event: app.screen.click

Status:

The event name MUST be app.screen.click.

This event represents an instantaneous click on the screen of an application.

The app.screen.click event can be used to indicate that a user has clicked or tapped on the screen portion of an application. Clicks outside of an application’s active area SHOULD NOT generate this event. This event does not differentiate between touch/mouse down and touch/mouse up. Implementations SHOULD give preference to generating this event at the time the click is complete, typically on touch release or mouse up. The location of the click event MUST be provided in absolute screen pixels.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
app.screen.coordinate.x		Required	int	The x (horizontal) coordinate of a screen coordinate, in screen pixels.	0; 131
app.screen.coordinate.y		Required	int	The y (vertical) component of a screen coordinate, in screen pixels.	12; 99
app.screen.id		Recommended	string	An identifier that uniquely differentiates this screen from other screens in the same application. [1]	f9bc787d-ff05-48ad-90e1-fca1d46130b3; com.example.app.MainActivity; com.example.shop.ProductDetailFragment; MyApp.ProfileView; MyApp.ProfileViewController
app.screen.name		Opt-In	string	The name of an application screen. [2]	MainActivity; ProductDetailFragment; ProfileView; ProfileViewController

[1] app.screen.id: A screen represents only the part of the device display drawn by the app. It typically contains multiple widgets or UI components and is larger in scope than individual widgets. Multiple screens can coexist on the same display simultaneously (e.g., split view on tablets).

[2] app.screen.name: A screen represents only the part of the device display drawn by the app. It typically contains multiple widgets or UI components and is larger in scope than individual widgets. Multiple screens can coexist on the same display simultaneously (e.g., split view on tablets).

Event: app.widget.click

Status:

The event name MUST be app.widget.click.

This event indicates that an application widget has been clicked.

Use this event to indicate that visual application component has been clicked, typically through a user’s manual interaction.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
app.widget.id		Required	string	An identifier that uniquely differentiates this widget from other widgets in the same application. [1]	f9bc787d-ff05-48ad-90e1-fca1d46130b3; submit_order_1829
app.screen.id		Recommended	string	An identifier that uniquely differentiates this screen from other screens in the same application. [2]	f9bc787d-ff05-48ad-90e1-fca1d46130b3; com.example.app.MainActivity; com.example.shop.ProductDetailFragment; MyApp.ProfileView; MyApp.ProfileViewController
app.screen.coordinate.x		Opt-In	int	The x (horizontal) coordinate of a screen coordinate, in screen pixels.	0; 131
app.screen.coordinate.y		Opt-In	int	The y (vertical) component of a screen coordinate, in screen pixels.	12; 99
app.screen.name		Opt-In	string	The name of an application screen. [3]	MainActivity; ProductDetailFragment; ProfileView; ProfileViewController
app.widget.name		Opt-In	string	The name of an application widget. [4]	submit; attack; Clear Cart

[1] app.widget.id: A widget is an application component, typically an on-screen visual GUI element.

[2] app.screen.id: A screen represents only the part of the device display drawn by the app. It typically contains multiple widgets or UI components and is larger in scope than individual widgets. Multiple screens can coexist on the same display simultaneously (e.g., split view on tablets).

[3] app.screen.name: A screen represents only the part of the device display drawn by the app. It typically contains multiple widgets or UI components and is larger in scope than individual widgets. Multiple screens can coexist on the same display simultaneously (e.g., split view on tablets).

[4] app.widget.name: A widget is an application component, typically an on-screen visual GUI element.

Crash Event

Event: app.crash

Status:

The event name MUST be app.crash.

This event represents a termination of a user-facing application due to unrecoverable programming errors such as exceptions or signals that indicate an error has happened at a lower level.

Crash events can be produced asynchronously by an OTel SDK instance that is not running in the application instance in which the crash happened. For example, the instrumentation may report crashes from previous app instances based on information found in tombstones on disk. If the reporter of the crash is not the crashing application instance itself, relevant resource attributes that identify the application instance that crashed MUST be provided as event attributes so that the corresponding attributes from the reporter’s resource aren’t used instead. How the instrumentation will determine whether an instance of a crash has already been reported and how the necessary data will be retrieved is left up to the instrumentation. Providing enough data to dedupe is NOT REQUIRED.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
app.build_id		Conditionally Required [1]	string	Unique identifier for a particular build or compilation of the application.	6cff0a7e-cefc-4668-96f5-1273d8b334d0; 9f2b833506aa6973a92fde9733e6271f; my-app-1.0.0-code-123
os.name		Conditionally Required [2]	string	Human readable operating system name.	iOS; Android; Ubuntu
os.version		Conditionally Required [3]	string	The version string of the operating system as defined in Version Attributes.	14.2.1; 18.04.1
service.version		Conditionally Required [4]	string	The version string of the service component. The format is not defined by these conventions.	2.0.0; a01dbef8a
app.crash.id		Recommended	string	A unique identifier representing an instance of an end-user facing app crash. [5]	083d3d2d-9a0e-47f8-be3d-bc3c5538ba38
exception.message		Recommended	string	The exception message. [6]	Division by zero; Can't convert 'int' object to str implicitly
exception.stacktrace		Recommended	string	A stacktrace as a string in the natural representation for the language runtime. The representation is to be determined and documented by each language SIG. [7]	Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: Test exception\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.methodB(GenerateTrace.java:13)\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.methodA(GenerateTrace.java:9)\n at com.example.GenerateTrace.main(GenerateTrace.java:5)
exception.type		Recommended	string	The type of the exception (its fully-qualified class name, if applicable). The dynamic type of the exception should be preferred over the static type in languages that support it. [8]	java.net.ConnectException; OSError
session.id		Recommended	string	A unique id to identify a session.	00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeeff

[1] app.build_id: If reporter is not the crashing application instance itself and it’s available.

[2] os.name: If reporter is not the crashing application instance itself and the OS name is available.

[3] os.version: If reporter is not the crashing application instance itself.

[4] service.version: If reporter is not the crashing application instance itself.

[5] app.crash.id: Its value MAY be meaningful and be used as a reference for telemetry and metadata recorded by the same instrumentation (e.g. it is an ID generated by an external source that captured the crash). It MAY come from a source external to the instrumentation such that it can be used to look up additional data from other sources as well as facilitate deduplication.

[6] exception.message: If this contains obfuscated symbols, app.build_id SHOULD be provided so they can be deobfuscated.

[7] exception.stacktrace: If this contains obfuscated symbols, app.build_id SHOULD be provided so they can be deobfuscated.

[8] exception.type: If this contains obfuscated symbols, app.build_id SHOULD be provided so they can be deobfuscated.

Jank Event

Event: app.jank

Jank is a disruption in UI rendering, resulting in a display that can feel sluggish or even unresponsive/frozen. Applications that are able to detect jank can report it with the following events:

Status:

The event name MUST be app.jank.

This event indicates that the application has detected substandard UI rendering performance.

Jank happens when the UI is rendered slowly enough for the user to experience some disruption or sluggishness.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
app.jank.frame_count		Recommended	int	A number of frame renders that experienced jank. [1]	9; 42
app.jank.period		Recommended	double	The time period, in seconds, for which this jank is being reported.	1.0; 5.0; 10.24
app.jank.threshold		Recommended	double	The minimum rendering threshold for this jank, in seconds.	0.016; 0.7; 1.024

[1] app.jank.frame_count: Depending on platform limitations, the value provided MAY be approximation.

Attributes

See the app attributes registry for all application-related attributes that may appear on telemetry items.