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 a Unity IL2CPP Build Bloated by Disabled Managed Stripping

Q: What causes a Unity IL2CPP build bloated by disabled managed stripping?

Managed Stripping Level is set to Disabled or Low, so the IL2CPP build compiles a large amount of unused engine and library code into the binary.

Q: How do you fix a Unity IL2CPP build bloated by disabled managed stripping?

Raise Managed Stripping Level to Medium or High in Player Settings and add a link.xml to preserve any types only referenced via reflection so stripping does not break them.

Quick answer: Raise Managed Stripping Level to Medium or High in Player Settings and add a link.xml to preserve any types only referenced via reflection so stripping does not break them.

IL2CPP converts your managed code to C++ and includes whatever the linker thinks is reachable. With stripping disabled it keeps everything; with higher stripping it removes unused methods and types, shrinking the binary. The catch is reflection, which a link.xml safelist protects.

How to fix it

1. Raise the stripping level

In Player Settings > Other Settings, set Managed Stripping Level to Medium (or High) to drop unreferenced code from the IL2CPP output.

2. Preserve reflection targets

Anything accessed via reflection or serialization (e.g. some JSON or DI frameworks) can be stripped wrongly. Add a link.xml with <preserve> entries or [Preserve] attributes to keep those types.

3. Test thoroughly after stripping

Run the stripped build and exercise reflection-heavy paths. If you hit missing-method errors at runtime, expand the link.xml rather than lowering the stripping level.

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 Unity 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.