why is the android app so consistently buggy?

English Forum Mobile Android - Tips & Tricks
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I’ve been using Asana for years and the web interface and iOS app is great. However the Android app is consistently full of significant bugs and performance issues. Every single time there is a new version, some bugs are fixed but invariably, new bugs appear.

I’ve been reporting these bugs constantly and super had been receptive and understanding of the issues but as a business paying thousands of dollars per year to use Asana, it’s not acceptable. There Is still a large list of bugs that I’ve reported months ago that have been acknowledged and confirmed but have not been fixed and have been told that some may not be addressed for many more months.

There are a handful of new bugs in the most recent update that are driving me nuts is when editing a task description, if I leave the app to copy something and return back to the app, sometimes the app will reload itself, losing my changes. I remember when this behavior of reloading the app started. I believe it was implemented as a means to address issues with the app slowing down, not loading correctly, and freeze it up since I was told some of the performance and reliability issues I was reporting have been addressed and this is when I know that new behavior. But right now a new issue is that this reload happens even when I just leave the app and come right back. It doesn’t happen all the time and when I return to the app I could still see my edits for a split second before the app reloads back to the main screen. The app isn’t restarting fully, but within the app it refreshes goes back to the home screen, losing everything I just wrote.

Another new issue that has been more of an annoyance is that when creating a new task, Create button when now has a tiny area that responds to tap (creating the task) and if you tap slightly outside of that, it actually tries to close and discard the task you just created. I have to tap exactly on the Create text with my finger tip to save the task, otherwise Asana tries to cancel it. It never did this before.

Anyone that is a heavy Android user certainly knows about all of the constant bugs related to performance, loading, images, crashes, etc. Yes we have lots of projects and some of them are very large with hundreds of tasks but this is why we pay Asana for what we believe to be a proper and professional solution.

What’s the point of this rant? Does Asana plan on ever completely fixing these issues? Considering the constant stream of new bugs, it sounds like there are serious deficiencies in QA process and/or the whole code base of the Android app is so fundamentally bad that it can never become a stable and reliable app.

I am hoping for insight to this problem from a sauna because I am close to switching to Trello or Monday. I’d very much prefer not to as it will be a huge mess to migrate and retrain the team. Please help.

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I’m sorry to hear this, @Gabe5

I will leave it to others to respond, except to suggest you might want to enumerate the specific new bugs each in their own topic in this category which will make them easier to track and potentially address. (And leave this topic as the general complaint.)

Thanks,

Larry

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Hi @Gabe5, Emily here your Community Forum Manager :wave: Thanks for sharing your feedback.

We understand the frustration with the ongoing issues you’ve experienced on the Android app, and we appreciate you bringing these to our attention. We’ll be sure to pass your feedback on to our product team as they continue to refine the Android experience.

Customers are at the heart of everything we do (our Head of product has shared all details in the Forum How Asana co-creates our product with customers). We try to address as many feedback and issues as we can to improve users experience, while striking a balance to ensure decision we make work for as many customers as possible.

As @lpb recommended above, If there is any specific ongoing issue that we could help you solve, please feel free to create a separate thread in the Android - Tips & Tricks category and share your Android OS version and Asana app version.

Let me know if you have any other questions, I’m happy to help!

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Fwiw, I am suddenly having a similar issue as OP issue with the android app (version. 8.33.4 on an S24 Ultra). When a create new task window is opened, filled out and the “create” button at the bottom is tapped, it tries to discard the new task rather than create it.

However, I can get it to create the task if I specifically tap the letter “C” in the word create. Seems like a bug. Hope this helps.

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Yes, I could list them all out in detail… But I’ve been doing this for months already speaking directly with support. I would spend a lot of time explaining each bug, pricing instructions on how to recreate the bug, and even videos showing the bug in action. In the past 12 months I’ve already reported dozens of bugs in this exact manner.

However, I feel like there isn’t a point for me to continue to waste my time since this because other than the little random annoying bugs that tend to get fixed without my input because they are quite obvious (should have been spotted by QC), the serious issues all revolve around performance and reliability. Right now there is a task that I can’t edit on Android because it constantly shows a message saying “An error has occurred” and doesn’t save my changes. Many times when viewing my notification feed, it stops responding or significantly shows down having to wait several seconds for it to respond…or how resorting tasks have to be done several times because it didn’t save the changes, or having to reload the screen several times in order to see changes that were made, or how the app ultimately crashes if I try to use it for more than 5 minutes at a time. Oh, viewing images on Android is a nightmare as you can’t see the edges of a large image because instead of dragging the view of the image to see different parts of a high resolution image, it just swipes to the previous/next image. Only solution for this is to download every image I want to look at and open it directly in Android outside of Asana.

Yes everything is up to date, yes I’ve cleared cache many many times, yes I’ve uninstalled the app and reinstalled it, yes it’s been happening consistent across various flagship Android devices even on a fresh newly purchased device with no other apps in it (so not a hardware or app conflict issue). Everything works fine in the website and on the iOS app. It’s just the Android.

So why not provide details of bugs now? I’ve done it… Many hours doing it with support… And I’ve been told point blank that many of these issues are related to fundamental issues with the core architecture of the Android app and that they couldn’t be fixed. I was told I’d have to wait many months, even years, until these issues come be fixed. So what’s the point?

I guess my question for Asana is…

  1. Do you publicly acknowledge these fundamental issues?
  2. What is the plan to address them in the short term?
  3. What is the plan to fully resolve it mid-term/long-term?

If you have any doubt or questions about any of this, pull up my account and review the support conversations over the last 6 months.

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I came here looking for a solution to the same issue, but it seems we are still at the stage of making ASANA aware of how serious the problem is.