bitdrift turns 1,000,000,000

Where it started

When we started building what would become Capture while still at Lyft, we were trying to solve a frustrating, expensive, and very real problem: Mobile observability didn’t work.

• Crash reporting wasn’t enough of a signal into the user experience with mobile apps.
• Non-crash issues were nearly impossible to debug.
• Guessing what to log ahead of time was definitely more art than science.
• Fixing anything meaningful required waiting on the next app release.

We knew we probably weren’t the only ones struggling with this. We also knew that it was a hard problem. And let’s be honest: we are drawn like bears to honey to hard problems that also happen to be business problems. So we spun out of Lyft with the goal of bringing effective mobile observability to the global masses.

We wondered: Does mobile observability have product market fit?

At the beginning, we had the fundamentals of a successful product and felt we needed independence to see if the broader market agreed. But, the road to success is windy and the needs of one company does not equal product market fit. At the time we had substantial doubt: Would the broader market agree that mobile observability is an important business problem worth investing in? If they did agree, would the economics be such that a successful business could be built around it? Three years, many new features, and over 1B installs later, we’re pleased to report that the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes”.

How it’s going: 1B app installs and other signals of progress

The overall premise of Capture is resonating very strongly with the broader mobile engineering and reliability market. Getting 1000x the data when you need it and none when you don’t via on-device storage and real-time control resonates especially strongly with very large enterprises. (This is probably not surprising, given that we have reached 1B app installs). Other signs of true progress:

• We’re watching our customers move beyond crash free rate as the sole definition of mobile reliability and user delight.
• They’re fixing countless usability issues that they previously thought were impossible to debug and fix.

We are helping bring more reliable computing experiences to the masses, which is the goal we set out to accomplish, and it’s extremely satisfying. And you know what? We’ve just scratched the surface of what is possible.

The future is bright

Between the countless features that our customers are asking for, and the agentic AI revolution which is just calling for a real-time data source; the likes of which only Capture can provide, we feel the future of Capture is bright. Moving forward, we are excited to work with many more customers, both large and small, to materially improve customer experience on our path to 10B app installs. It’s a goal that feels within reach. Capture is changing the mobile observability game by adding a control plane and local storage on every mobile device, providing extremely detailed telemetry when you need it, and none when you don’t. Interested in learning more? Here are some options:

• Get in touch for a demo.
• Check out the sandbox or start a free trial to dive right into the product and see what working with Capture is like.
• Join us in Slack to ask questions and share feedback.

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Frequently asked questions

What does “1 billion installs” actually mean?

When we say “one billion installs”, we mean the bitdrift Capture SDK has been present in over 1 billion distinct app installs across customer applications. This reflects real-world usage across a wide range of devices, operating systems, and network conditions—not synthetic environments or limited test data. More importantly, it represents the scale at which teams are using bitdrift to debug real mobile issues in production.

Is this the same as having 1 billion users or customers?

No. This milestone refers to total app installs across bitdrift customers—not individual customers or active users. A single customer with a widely used mobile app can contribute millions of installs. What matters is that bitdrift is operating at massive scale across real production environments.

How is bitdrift different from traditional mobile observability or crash reporting tools?

Traditional tools rely on ingesting large volumes of data into centralized systems, which forces teams to choose between cost and visibility. bitdrift takes a different approach:

• Data is captured locally on-device
• Teams dynamically control what gets sent and when
• Full-fidelity context is available without ingesting everything

This allows teams to debug complex issues—including non-crash failures—without overpaying for telemetry or waiting on new releases.

What kinds of issues can bitdrift help teams debug?

bitdrift helps teams go beyond crashes to understand the full user experience. This includes:

• Slow or unresponsive UI interactions
• ANRs and performance regressions
• Network failures and timeouts
• Hard-to-reproduce edge cases
• Multi-step user journey failures

By capturing full session context, teams can investigate issues that traditional tools often miss.