gplay vitals (post-launch quality signals)

gplay vitals reads Android vitals — the post-launch quality signals you know from the Play Console: crash rate, ANR rate, slow cold start, slow rendering, excessive wakeups, low-memory kills, stuck background wakelocks, plus error reports and Play-detected anomalies. Shared conventions (auth, output, exit codes, --package pinning) are in gplay-cli-usage.

Two things make this namespace different from the rest of gplay:

• A distinct Google service. Vitals is backed by the Play Developer

Reporting API (playdeveloperreporting), not the Android Publisher API. Same service-account file, but a different OAuth scope (…/auth/playdeveloperreporting). If the service account was invited only for publishing, vitals calls fail with a 403 (exit 11) until the reporting scope is granted — that is an environment fix, not a flag.

• Read-only, always. Every vitals command only reads metrics. There is no

write here, so GPLAY_READONLY never blocks it, and no command needs --confirm.

Preset rate commands — the fast path

Each vital has an opinionated preset that needs no metric/dimension knowledge — it reports the set's primary metric over a default 28-day DAILY window:

bash
gplay vitals crashes           # crash rate (on the pinned package)
gplay vitals anr               # ANR rate
gplay vitals slowstart         # slow cold-start rate
gplay vitals slowrendering     # janky-frames rate
gplay vitals excessivewakeup   # excessive wakeup rate
gplay vitals lmk               # low-memory-kill rate
gplay vitals stuckbgwakelock   # stuck background wakelock rate

All the presets share the same knobs:

bash
gplay vitals crashes --by versionCode --version 123   # slice, then filter to one build
gplay vitals crashes --by country                     # or by country / device
gplay vitals anr --since 7d --period DAILY             # window: 28d default; HOURLY opt-in

• --by country|device|versionCode slices the timeline (availability depends on

the metric set); --version filters to a single versionCode.

• --since 28d / --period DAILY|HOURLY|FULL_RANGE set the window.

vitals query — full control

When a preset's single primary metric isn't enough, vitals query <metric-set> wraps the metric set directly and lets you pick metrics and dimensions:

bash
gplay vitals query crashrate --metrics crashRate,distinctUsers --dimensions versionCode
gplay vitals query anrrate --period HOURLY --since 24h

--metrics and --dimensions are validated offline against the API schema embedded in the binary — an unknown name is rejected with the valid set listed (gplay never invents a metric or dimension). With no --metrics, the set's primary metric is used. The metric-set ids are crashrate, anrrate, slowstartrate, slowrenderingrate, excessivewakeuprate, lmkrate, stuckbackgroundwakelockrate — the same ones the presets wrap.

vitals errors — reports, issues, counts

Error reporting is a sub-tree, not a single metric:

bash
gplay vitals errors counts      # error report counts over a window (errorCount metric set)
gplay vitals errors issues      # clustered issues — crashes/ANRs grouped by cause
gplay vitals errors reports     # individual error reports (the stack traces)

Deobfuscation gotcha: for an obfuscated (R8/ProGuard) app, error reports and issues are unreadable stack traces until the matching mapping is uploaded. That upload is an Android Publisher Edit artifact keyed by versionCode and lives under releases, not here:

bash
gplay releases upload app.aab --mapping mapping.txt   # or: releases mappings upload

Upload the mapping under releases; read the symbolicated result under vitals.

vitals anomalies — what Play flagged itself

bash
gplay vitals anomalies --since 90d
gplay vitals anomalies --filter 'activeBetween("2026-01-01T00:00:00Z", UNBOUNDED)'

Lists the metric anomalies (unexpected crash/ANR spikes, …) Play detected. --since builds an activeBetween(...) window for you; --filter passes a raw AIP-160 predicate and overrides --since when you need an open-ended range. --limit 0 returns all (no cap).

Freshness — an empty window is not zero

The reporting service reports metrics with a lag. Every rate/query command prints a freshness note to stderr (the latest date carrying data) so an empty or short window is not mistaken for "zero crashes". When you ask for --since 24h right after a release, expect the window to be empty until the data lands — read the freshness line, don't conclude the app is clean.

Output

--output json mirrors the reporting API response verbatim (ADR-0003) — a CI gate is usually one jq line over the timeline. table/markdown render the timeline (dates × metrics, sliced by your dimension). Remember stdout is data; the freshness note and warnings go to stderr and never pollute the JSON.

vitals is playdeveloperreporting, not "androidvitals" (no such host). Confirm the current verbs and flags with gplay vitals --help and gplay vitals <command> --help.