What happens to apps still communicating App Center on 31st March 2025

[beeradmoore]

We still have apps in the wild that are using App Center for crash and analytics tracking.

While we should move away from App Center (and Xamarin.Forms/iOS/Android and to MAUI) we will have existing apps out there using App Center.

If the servers go dark/redirect, will the SDK just shout into the void or will this cause apps to start crashing and require us to manually remove the SDKs?

[BFuchshofer]

We also need to know what happens after March 31st. We have a dozen apps using App Center. Do we need to expect crashes after this date? Do we need to update all of our apps to counter this?

[BFuchshofer]

No one knows? No one cares??

[DmitriyKirakosyan]

Hi @beeradmoore and @BFuchshofer, thanks for reaching out! The App Center SDK won't cause the app to crash. It will make several attempts to call the App Center API, then stop trying to send data until the next app restart.

[beeradmoore]

Thanks for the info @DmitriyKirakosyan . I'll leave this open to make it easier for others to find

[BFuchshofer]

Many thanks @DmitriyKirakosyan !

[heena-dhawan-eptura]

Is there any way to test this? How can we make sure nothing breaks for our apps after 31st March? @DmitriyKirakosyan

[DordeDimitrijev]

Hello @heena-dhawan-eptura you can try using mock requests instead of real ones. Another approach could be changing url for method setLogUrl.

[edey-foreflight]

@DmitriyKirakosyan what will happen to the on-disk crash reports? Since the app won't be able to deliver them, will they continue to accumulate on the device forever, or is there a limit/cleanup process in the previously deployed SDKs?

[beeradmoore]

Email I got from App Center support the day after I opened this issue (was reaching out in all the ways I could)

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If the service is unavailable, then SDK will try accessing the API and fail with unrecoverable error (or perhaps recoverable, then it will retry a few times), then it will log the errors to the application output and disable the ingestion channel, meaning the logs will not be sending to the App Center service in the current session, until the app is restarted (completely) and the SDK will try sending again.

It will keep saving the logs to the local storage though.
If you want to avoid consuming disk space, please set storage size to minimal value (20 kb). Default value is 10 mb.

If you want to do a hot-fix release, but don't have time to clean up the code from all AppCenter SDK calls, you may disable Analytics, Crashes and Distribute by removing them from AppCenter.start call, and/or disable network requests by using AppCenter.setNetworkRequestsAllowed(false). This will prevent AppCenter SDK from trying sending any data to the App Center service.

[agustinbishel]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/appcenter/retirement#update-03202025-extension-of-product-support-for-analytics--diagnostics

There is no build or release service, but analytics and diagnostics are still available.