How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Firebase Analytics Auto Events Not Firing on a Debug Device

Q: What causes Firebase Analytics auto events not firing on a debug device?

Firebase batches and dispatches events roughly once an hour by default, so on a test device the events appear to never fire when you check immediately.

Quick answer: Enable Firebase debug mode so events dispatch immediately, watch them in DebugView, and confirm collection is enabled before assuming events are lost.

Your automatic session_start and screen_view events seem absent because Firebase only uploads about hourly. Turning on debug mode dispatches them instantly so you can verify.

How to fix it

1. Enable debug mode

Run adb shell setprop debug.firebase.analytics.app your.package on Android (or the iOS -FIRDebugEnabled launch argument) to force immediate dispatch. Events then appear in DebugView within seconds.

2. Check collection is enabled

Confirm analytics collection is not disabled by a consent gate or manifest flag, which would suppress even automatic events. A disabled SDK sends nothing regardless of dispatch interval.

3. Do not judge by the hourly batch

In normal (non-debug) builds events upload on a roughly hourly schedule or on background, so an immediate check after launch will look empty even when everything works.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every mobile error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The errors you never hear about are the ones quietly costing you players. Visibility turns them into a worklist.