Firebase, Google LLC’s platform for creating mobile and web applications, today received a number of new features aimed at helping developers stay ahead of the game, including a Storage Emulation suite, app security with App Check, more extensions, crash reporting and more.

The first announcement is that Cloud Storage for Firebase has joined the Emulator Suite, which allows developers to run emulated versions of backend products locally. That allows rapid development without changing any production data or dealing with extra costs.

Google has now added support for Android App Bundles to Firebase, which will let developers fully manage the distribution of their apps. With Firebase App Distribution developers can also distribute pre-release versions of their apps to trusted testers to get valuable feedback before the launch on iOS and Android.

With App Check, now available in beta, developers can protect users, defend data from outside threats and control access to infrastructure with less stress. The security feature protects access to services by verifying incoming traffic from the app and blocking any traffic that doesn’t have valid credentials.

Firebase Extensions will provide bundles of code that developers can use to automate common development tasks and add new functionality to apps in fewer steps. Google started with nine Extensions, and now through partnerships with prominent companies, even more are slated for release.

For example, a few months ago Google worked with Stripe to launch Run Subscription Payments and the Send Invoices using Stripe extensions. During Google I/O, the Firebase team announced a new Search with Algolia extension, which adds search and discovery features to apps by indexing databases. Developers can also send personalized emails to customers using a Manage Marketing with Mailchimp extension or text message them via WhatsApp or Telegram with Send Message with MessageBird.

App crashes can now be more easily instrumented with Firebase Crashlytics custom keys search and filtering capabilities. Crashlytics gives a broad view into app stability for tracking and resolving bugs before they affect a large number of users. With this tool, it’s possible to discover trends in crashes affecting apps and filter down through sessions and fix the most problematic crashes by looking at what affected them using the new custom keys filtering.

With Firebase Remote Config, developers can dynamically control their apps after they are deployed, without the need to release a new version of the app. That allows them to set up feature flags, run experiments and test ideas. Examples of what can be done include running A/B tests, optimize apps for specific use cases and drive specific outcomes such as boosting ad revenue or reducing load on particular users without forcing them to update their apps.

Remote Config also provides a feature called “personalization,” which uses machine learning to optimize individual user experiences for particular goals. For example, it can maximize user engagement or revenue, such as by tuning a game’s difficulty so a player doesn’t quit playing. Some players will quit because they die too often and some quit because they crave a challenge.

After a simple setup, personalization will continuously work toward a configuration for each user to produce the best outcome. Early looks at this feature are available in an alpha program.

Finally, Firebase Performance Monitoring now processes data in real time and does so using a revamped dashboard. Performance monitoring in Firebase gathers, collects and presents data about developers’ app performance so they can understand their app behavior. That way, when users experience slowness or other instabilities, it can be visualized in a manner that makes it easier to understand.

In turn, that means developers can closely watch the health of their apps in real time during release or immediately after launching a new feature and take action whenever something changes. As a result, they can swiftly react if an issue takes shape.

A few months ago, Google also changed the redesigned, customizable dashboard and added a new traces table. The latter helps sort, search and pinpoint changes that need immediate attention and includes metrics that aren’t monitored every day.

Image: Google