Mobile Replay Kilo Issue #2 🪨

[pauldambra]

One smaller than Mega is Kilo 🏋️

This issue acts as a tracking place of the to-do list to get Mobile replay ready for release

getting real user feedback

We already had #19037 that tracked getting to the point we were happy getting real user feedback

now we want to get to the point where we release as an open beta

Must have

• how to release without charging @pauldambra
• WEB - add android instructions to onboarding/session_replay?step=install @pauldambra
• WEB - add replay advert to onboarding/product_analytics?step=install for android @pauldambra
• WEB - add replay advert to onboarding/feature_flags?step=install for android @pauldambra
• RENDER - way nicer placeholders (keyboard and image, but we could use other OS actions like open camera too) @pauldambra
• WEB - quick filter for web/mobile replays in playback @pauldambra
• CAPTURE - RENDER - better default image capture/rendering? @marandaneto
• CAPTURE - RENDER - better default background capture/rendering? @marandaneto

Nice to have

• SDK - separate masking text and masking inputs @marandaneto
• CAPTURE - RENDER - how do we deal with custom components? @marandaneto @pauldambra
• SDK - default to capturing images? @marandaneto
• CI - integration testing - we rely on the fact that we use replay for our websites for quick production feedback but we don't have an app - we can playback a recording in UI testing, pause at a known timestamp, switch to DOM explore, and assert on the state of the DOM
• CAPTURE - RENDER - expanded supported components (e.g. calendar, scroll view)
• CAPTURE - better "frame rate" for capture @marandaneto
• WEB - authorized "domains" for folk with multiple apps
• WEB - Adjust the player layout for vertical mobile recordings, thus giving more screen space to events/logs/...
• CAPTURE - RENDER - WEB - Support custom fonts
• INGESTION - prefer top level distinct id
• INGESTION - Make $window_id optional since it does not make sense for Mobile

Push into the future

• supporting multiple modes of capture
  • e.g. maybe needed to support jetpack compose
• capture a webview as part of the same recording if posthog replay is installed in the app and the webview

See also:

• PoC Session Replay - Android with wireframes posthog-android#69
• Track some more info in Replays to be less reliant on Events #16792
• Android Session Recordings #13267
• React Native Session Recordings #13269
• iOS Session Recordings #12344
• Indicate keyboard is likely open for mobile session recordings #12054
• Capture network requests and responses in session replay #16410
• Team Replay Q4 2023 Mega Issue 🤘 #17803
• https://github.com/PostHog/product-internal/issues/519

[pauldambra]

@marandaneto I started marking us against the items but then realised it was pretty obvious which was who 🙈

[marandaneto]

SDK - separate masking text and masking inputs

You can use the ph-no-capture

[marandaneto]

CAPTURE - RENDER - how do we deal with custom components?

You can use the drawableConverter

[marandaneto]

SDK - default to capturing images?

The problem here is PII, we know they are images but not what they contain, this will be a bigger problem if we switch to the screenshot mode, working on screenshot PII now.

[marandaneto]

CAPTURE - better "frame rate" for capture

There were a few improvements, such as the debouncer with the debouncerDelayMs config.

[marandaneto]

Closing in favor of
#23275
#23276
#23277
Most of the other tasks were done or not prioritized, for now, we can always go back and decide to raise new issues for the other ones, let's focus on getting Mobile session replay stable and out of GA and improving based on user's feedback first.