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Mobile Lifecycle events

By default, our Android SDK automatically tracks events that represent the lifecycle of your app and your users experiences with it.

By default, we track the following lifecycle events:

• Application Installed: A user installed your app.
• Application Updated: A user updated your app.
• Application Opened: A user opened your app.
• Application Foregrounded: A user switched back to your app.
• Application Backgrounded: A user backgrounded your app or switched to another app.

You might also want to send your own lifecycle events, like Application Crashed or Application Updated. You can do this using the track method. You’ll find a list of properties for these events—both the ones we track automatically and other events you might send yourself—in our Mobile App Lifecycle Event specification.

Lifecycle event examples

A lifecycle event is basically a track call that the SDK makes automatically for you.

When you look at your source data in Customer.io, you’ll see lifecycle events as track calls, where the event properties are specific to the name of the event. For example, the Application Installed event includes the app version and build properties.

{
  "userId": "app.installer@example.com",
  "type": "track",
  "event": "Application Installed",
  "properties": {
    "version": "3.2.1", "build": "247"
  }
}

Sending custom lifecycle events

You can send your own lifecycle events using the track call. However, whenever you send lifecycle events, you should use the Application EventName convention that we use for our default lifecycle events.

These semantic event names and properties represent a standard that we use across Customer.io and our downstream destinations. Adhering to this standard ensures that your events automatically map to the correct event types in Customer.io and any other services you send your data to.

If you opt out of automatic lifecycle events, you can send your own track calls for these events. Or, for events we can’t track automatically, you might be able to use a webhook or a callback to collect crash events. For example, you might want to send a track call for Application Crashed when your app crashes or Application Updated when people update your app.

CustomerIO.instance().track(
  name = "Application Crashed",
  properties = mapOf("url" to "/page/in/app")
)

Disable lifecycle events

We track lifecycle events by default. You can disable this behavior by passing the setTrackApplicationLifecycleEvents option to the SDK’s config builder.

CustomerIOBuilder(
  applicationContext = this,
  cdpApiKey = configuration.cdpApiKey
).apply {
  trackApplicationLifecycleEvents(false)
  build()
}