Why does a bug only happen on certain devices?

Because the bug is in your code's interaction with a hardware or software difference that only certain devices have, a particular GPU or driver, OS version, screen size, input method, or memory limit. The bug is effectively there for any device with that characteristic, but devices without it (including your dev machine) don't trigger it. That's why it appears on some hardware and not yours, and why capturing issues tagged by device is needed to see the pattern.

How do I fix a device-specific bug?

Capture the bug tagged by device, OS, and version, group occurrences, and look at the device breakdown to find the pattern, all on one GPU, OS, or screen size, which points at the cause (a device difference your code assumed away). Then fix the specific code path for that configuration or guard it on the affected devices. You fix it from the device pattern in the captured data, since you likely can't reproduce it without the affected hardware.

What Causes Device-Specific Bugs?

Quick answer: Device-specific bugs come from differences between devices: GPUs and drivers, OS versions, screen sizes, input methods, memory, and hardware capabilities. Your code hits a difference only certain devices expose.

Device-specific bugs, which appear on some hardware but not others, are common because players use a vast range of devices. They come from the ways those devices differ. Here's what causes device-specific bugs.

The Differences That Cause Them

Players' devices differ in many ways, and a device-specific bug arises when your code hits a difference that only certain devices have.

GPUs and drivers, which handle rendering, shaders, and features differently
OS versions, with different behaviors, APIs, and bugs
Screen sizes and resolutions, which can break UI layout or rendering assumptions
Input methods, touch, controller, keyboard/mouse behaving differently
Memory, lower-memory devices hitting limits others don't
Hardware capabilities, features some devices support and others don't
Aspect ratios and DPI, which can cause display and scaling bugs

The bug is in your code's interaction with one of these differences, so it appears only on devices with that characteristic.

Why They Don't Happen for You

Your dev machine is one configuration, so a bug specific to a different GPU, OS, screen, or input simply won't happen for you. Device-specific bugs are invisible from your testing because you don't have the triggering hardware, while affecting a real segment of players.

Bugnet captures crashes and reports tagged by device, OS, and version from real players, so device-specific bugs surface with the hardware context even though you can't reproduce them. Capturing from the affected players is the only practical way to see these bugs.

Finding the Device Pattern

Device-specific bugs reveal themselves as a cluster: all on one GPU, one OS, one screen size. Grouping issues and looking at the device breakdown surfaces this pattern, turning a baffling bug into 'this happens on this hardware,' which points at the cause, often a device difference your code assumed away.

Bugnet groups issues and shows the device distribution, so a device-specific pattern stands out. So device-specific bugs come from hardware and software differences between devices, and finding them means capturing issues by device to reveal which configurations are affected and why.

Device-specific bugs come from differences between devices, GPUs, drivers, OS versions, screen sizes, input, memory. Your code hits a difference only some devices have. Capture issues by device to find the pattern.