ANR (Application Not Responding)

An ANR is what Android throws when an app's main thread is blocked too long. A foreground app blocks the UI thread for 5 seconds or more and the system shows the "ANR: app is not responding" dialog.

Why it matters

ANRs are one of the two metrics (alongside crash rate) that Google Play uses to flag apps as "Bad Behavior" in Android Vitals. Apps with user-perceived ANR rates above Google's thresholds see ranking penalties, warning banners in the Play Store, and in extreme cases removal from peak-time recommendations.

For your team, ANRs mean users seeing a frozen UI, tapping through the "close app" dialog, and leaving 1-star reviews.

How GPC handles it

Query current ANR rate for your app:

gpc vitals anr

Gate a CI pipeline on ANR threshold:

gpc vitals anr --threshold 0.47 --window 7d

Exit code 6 on threshold breach lets your CI halt a rollout or block a promote.

Full vitals view:

gpc status --sections vitals

Common issues

• User-perceived ANR rate vs raw ANR count — Google's "bad behavior" threshold uses the user-perceived rate (28-day, percent of users who experienced an ANR). GPC reports both.
• 7-day thresholds vs 28-day — Google Vitals dashboards default to 28-day windows. GPC supports both via --window 7d or --window 28d.
• Missing ANR data for new apps — Google requires a minimum installed-base to aggregate ANR data. New apps under that threshold return empty responses.

Related

• Google Play Vitals — the broader health-metrics system
• gpc vitals — all vitals subcommands
• CI vitals gates — threshold gating in pipelines
• Staged Rollout — gating rollouts on vitals