Android: ManualAppStartup Sentry span duration grows with each close+reopen cycle

[Julesssss]

Problem

On Android, when the app is closed and quickly reopened, the system reuses the still-alive process. Since AppStartTimeProvider is a ContentProvider, its onCreate() only runs once per process — not on each app reopen. This causes the startup timestamp in SharedPreferences to become stale, making the ManualAppStartup Sentry span duration grow with each close+reopen cycle.

Solution

Move the System.currentTimeMillis() recording from AppStartTimeProvider.onCreate() to ExpensifyActivityBase.onCreate(), which is recreated on every app open even with process reuse.

Fix: https://github.com/Expensify/Mobile-Expensify/pull/13900

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @war-in

[Julesssss]

Nice find. I was looking at a similar issue where we couldn't detect an Android warm start because the process was being re-used! Let's see what this does to our metrics

[Julesssss]

Hi @elirangoshen could you review this and give us a second opinion? I merged to avoid waiting until tomorrow.

This would help explain where the multiple-hour-long spans were coming from.

[elirangoshen]

Hi, yes I agree its great catch !

Actually when I used. this provider it was because it suppose to execute earlier than from onCreate but I didn't know it can have this affect - so obviously its crucial to move it to onCreate

Thanks :)

[melvin-bot]

⚠️ Looks like this issue was linked to a Deploy Blocker here

If you are the assigned CME please investigate whether the linked PR caused a regression and leave a comment with the results.

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[war-in]

I don't think it's related our Mobile-Expensify is already on production and the issue says that it's not reproducible there