What Firebase Crashlytics means for your app's privacy disclosures
Firebase Crashlytics is a crash and performance monitor from Google. What it involves, whether it needs the tracking prompt, what goes on the App Store labels and the Play Data safety form, and the rejection it is usually behind.
What Firebase Crashlytics actually does
Crash reporting for mobile, and usually the reason Firebase is in the project at all.
What its job necessarily involves
These follow from what the thing is for, so they are true whichever version you installed:
- Crash traces, device state and an installation identifier.
- Custom keys and log messages you attach to a report.
What to open and check in Firebase Crashlytics
The settings below decide what the honest answer on the forms is, and they are specific to this SDK rather than to its category:
- Whether you set a user identifier on reports, which ties a crash to a person.
- What your custom keys and log messages contain.
- Whether Firebase Analytics came along with the install, which it usually does.
Firebase Crashlytics does not need the tracking prompt
A stack trace is not an advertising identifier, and nothing here follows anyone anywhere. So Firebase Crashlytics does not on its own require App Tracking Transparency. That is a statement about this SDK, not about your app: add one ad network or one attribution tool and the prompt applies to everything.
Firebase Crashlytics in Europe: defensible under legitimate interests
Keeping an app from crashing is a real interest of yours and of the person using it, so crash and performance monitoring is one of the easier things to justify under legitimate interests. That is not a free pass: you still have to write down the assessment, say so in the policy, and keep what you collect to what a fix needs.
Firebase Crashlytics in California: probably not a sale
Firebase Crashlytics does its job for you rather than for its own commercial purposes, which normally keeps it a service provider rather than a sale. That depends on your contract saying so, and the standard terms usually do.
Firebase Crashlytics on the App Store privacy labels
Apple asks what your app collects, and your app collects whatever its SDKs collect. Firebase Crashlytics is generally declared under App Functionality, alongside whatever the rest of your app does for its own reasons.
Firebase Crashlytics on the Google Play Data safety form
The form asks two things the labels do not: whether data is shared with anyone else, and whether it is encrypted in transit. For this SDK the honest answer is usually collected but not shared, because it processes on your behalf.
Check Google's own privacy manifest for Firebase Crashlytics
Since 2024 Apple has required third-party SDKs on its list to ship a signed privacy manifest declaring what they collect and which sensitive APIs they use, and your app's combined manifest is built from them. That file is the authoritative answer for Firebase Crashlytics, it comes from Google, and it changes when they ship.
The rejection Firebase Crashlytics is usually behind
Crashlytics is declared as diagnostics while the Firebase Analytics that came with it is declared as nothing.
What to put in the privacy policy about Firebase Crashlytics
- Google named as a processor or a recipient, not hidden behind "our partners".
- What it is for, in a sentence someone would understand without knowing what an SDK is.
- Where it runs, and what makes a transfer outside your region lawful.
- How long the data is kept, which is a question the vendor documents and most policies skip.
- That it processes on your instructions rather than for its own purposes.
Keeping it true after launch
A legal page stops being true the moment the product moves past it, usually by adding a payment provider, an analytics SDK or a sign-in. No store re-checks your pages against your build, so the drift is yours to notice.
- Re-read it whenever you add a dependency that sees user data.
- Re-check what loads on the page after any change: the cookie notice and the policy have to agree.
- Keep the URL stable. Changing where a policy lives breaks every listing that points at it.
Common questions
Do I need a privacy policy just because I use Firebase Crashlytics?
Yes, and you needed one anyway. Both stores ask for the URL before a listing goes live, whatever the app does. The SDK changes what the policy has to say, not whether you need one.
Does Firebase Crashlytics put me over the line into tracking?
Not by itself. The question is always about your app as a whole, so it is the other things you installed that decide the answer.
Does removing the SDK fix a rejection?
Usually yes and it is the fastest route, but only if you also correct the labels and the form. Reviewers compare what you declared against what the binary contains, and a stale declaration fails on its own.