Batbrief

Changelog

Every release of Batbrief. A version is year.month.release — 2026.8.1 is the first release of August 2026 — so the number tells you how old your build is at a glance.

2026.10.2 — 3 October 2026

Battery

The live monitor is now a screen of its own, Battery, with three tabs. Now is the live monitor, free and as it was.

History (Pro) draws the battery level over the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days, with the charges marked, and says how fast the phone drains in use and at rest, how much of the time it spends in deep sleep, and how long a charge lasts with your usual use and at rest.

Health (Pro) measures the battery’s capacity on your own phone — the charge the phone counts going in and out, against the percentage it moved — and sets it beside the capacity the phone was built with, where the phone declares one. It also shows the charge cycles (Android’s own count from Android 14, an estimate before that) and the temperature over the last week.

A battery log you turn on

Both tabs read a log the app keeps only on the phone: one reading every 15 minutes, off until you start it in the History tab or in Settings. Android groups it with other background work, so at night the readings come further apart. It is left out of Android’s backup; stopping it keeps what was recorded, and “Delete history” removes it.

2026.10.1 — 2 October 2026

Capturing

Stop now ends a capture at once. While the system’s bug report was between two steps, it used to carry on in the background although the screen said it had stopped, and a new capture ran into it; a capture stopped at the very end no longer leaves forty megabytes behind in the app’s cache. A scheduled capture no longer skips a night because the app was started before Shizuku had reached it, and Capture works from the moment the app opens. A capture in progress shows how long it has been running when you come back to it.

Getting to the report

A capture started from the guide now goes on to the report, instead of back to the guide’s steps. “Import a bugreport.zip” in the Reports list opens the file picker, and an import that fails from Setup says so. After a re-analysis, a language switch or a capture started from inside a report, you stay on the section you were reading, and the sample keeps its “this is a sample” banner when you choose another period.

Your report stays yours

The unpacked copy of a report is now deleted when an import fails and when you leave the app with Back, not only when you close the report, and a report shared into the app while another is open no longer touches the other’s files.

In your language

Error messages say what went wrong and what to do next, in the app’s language. Italian reports no longer contain English words, numbers follow the language you switch to, and the Timeline’s lane names are never cut short.

Two crashes

On some phones that report Android 14 while running Android 13, the app could crash with an accessibility service turned on and, in the Play build, when a purchase started. Both are fixed.

2026.9.12 — 29 September 2026

Getting a report, without a computer

An app cannot take a bug report by itself — Android keeps that for the system — so Batbrief now walks you through the three ways there are: from the phone (Developer options, the system’s Bug report and its notification; no computer, nothing to install), with Shizuku, or with root. Every step has the button that takes you there, and the steps you have already done are ticked when you come back. When the system’s notification says the report is ready, Batbrief is now in the list it offers.

Capturing from inside the app

With Shizuku, capturing a report from inside Batbrief now works on phones without root (it failed at the last step before), says why when it does not, and can be tried again. Captured reports stay in the Reports list, where they can be opened again and compared, and you choose how many to keep: 5, 10, 20, 50 or all of them — ten unless you say otherwise. They are left out of Android’s cloud backup: they never leave the phone, not even that way.

Pro

In the build from Google Play, Pro is now one subscription, monthly or yearly, with a seven-day free trial whose terms are shown before you start it. It adds the scheduled capture, the clean-night baseline and the before/after comparison; how many reports are kept is a setting for everybody. When a subscription ends, a schedule pauses and carries on if it comes back; nothing you kept is deleted. The build from F-Droid stays fully open, and asks for a donation from a Support card in Info and a weekly notification you can silence.

Crash reports and usage statistics, in the Play build

The build from Google Play now sends crash reports and usage statistics through Google Firebase, so problems on phones other than ours get seen. You are asked once, after the first run, with both switches on the screen, and both stay in Settings. Neither ever contains anything from a bug report. The privacy policy has the details; the build from F-Droid has none of this.

2026.9.11 — beta, 20 September 2026

Signing in with Google

Proving your address to Batbrief already worked from the Messages screen — an address, six digits, a mail app — and it still does, everywhere. If your phone already has a Google account on it, there is now a shorter road: one tap, no mail.

This is not a login. Nothing in the app is gated behind signing in — it is only what makes proving an address cheap enough that you actually do it, which is what lets Pro be granted by hand to it. The FOSS build is unchanged and links no Google code at all.

Asked to rate Batbrief, once the advice has paid off

Batbrief may now ask you to rate it on Google Play — not on a cold launch, but after a before/after comparison shows your idle drain actually went down, the moment a finding’s advice is shown to have worked. It never asks while the Pro screen or Info’s feedback and messages sheets are open, and the FOSS build has no Play Store listing to rate, so it asks nothing.

2026.9.9 — beta, 5 September 2026

A sentence on the first screen that was not true

It said this app has no permission to use the internet at all. It has, and it has had since the store and the public list of supporters went in — the sentence had simply outlived both.

What replaces it is the part that was worth saying anyway, and this one is true: a bug report is unpacked into the app’s own storage, read there and deleted there. No part of one is ever sent anywhere, and there is no code in the app that could send it. The internet is used for the store and for fetching that list of supporters, and neither goes near a report.

The three points on that screen were also drawn on top of one another, with the text pressed against both edges. Fixed.

2026.9.8 — beta, 5 September 2026

The hours were wrong, and by a lot

Android does not record your battery history in one continuous stretch. It stops and starts, and a real phone’s history is a handful of blocks with days of nothing between them — one we read had 22 of them spread over 97 days, with only 344 hours actually written down.

Whatever was going on when a block ended was being counted as though it had carried on through the gap. On that phone it meant the screen was reported as on for 658 hours: 90% of a month. It now reads 1 hour, and the screen-off figures did not move at all — they were already right, and they are what everything the app says about overnight drain is built on.

The milliamp figures were never affected. They are a division, and both halves were being stretched by the same amount, so the number at the top of the verdict looked correct while the hours underneath it did not. That is why this lasted as long as it did.

2026.9.7 — beta, 5 September 2026

The same app as 2026.9.6, which could not be built anywhere but on the machine it was written on. Nothing you can see changed.

2026.9.6 — beta, 5 September 2026

A first run that starts from the right end

The app used to open on a note about Shizuku — a second app you start over adb from a computer, which stops every time you reboot — with the four steps for getting a bug report out of Android itself underneath, reading like the workaround.

They are the opposite. Android makes bug reports for anybody: no permissions, nothing installed, no computer. You ask for one in the developer options, and when the notification arrives you share it with Batbrief. Shizuku buys two conveniences on top — capturing without leaving the app, and capturing while you sleep — and nothing else.

So the first run now says what the app tells you, then where a report comes from, then that the rest is optional. And the main button on the first screen is the one your phone can actually use: capture was always the filled one, so on a phone without Shizuku the screen’s primary action was one you could not press.

2026.9.5 — beta, 4 September 2026

A capture no longer needs you to stand and watch it

It ran inside the screen you started it from: the app had to stay open for the two or three minutes it takes, and if anything closed it — you, or the system reclaiming memory — the capture died with nothing to say so, while the tool it had started carried on and wrote a file nobody would ever read.

It runs in the background now. The notification says how far along it is, and it has a Stop button that really stops it. That last word matters: the old cancel only stopped the app waiting, and said so.

And the screen stays on while you are watching it. A capture takes minutes and nobody touches the phone during one, so the display timed out squarely in the middle and you came back to a lock screen with no idea whether anything was still happening.

Something to look at before you set Shizuku up

Taking a real report needs Shizuku, and Shizuku needs a computer. Until that was done there was nothing in this app to see — the wall stood in front of the very first screen.

There is now a sample report: one tap, every tab filled in, three findings of three different kinds. It says on every screen that it is a sample and not your phone, because a demo mistaken for a diagnosis is worse than no demo at all.

2026.9.4 — beta, 4 September 2026

The F-Droid build is open

The build served here carries no store code — that is the point of it — and it was still locking the schedule, the comparison screen and the clean-night screen behind Pro, with a note explaining that there was no store to buy from. There was nothing behind that wall and no way through it. A paywall in a build that cannot take money does not sell anything; it only blocks.

Everything is open in it now.

And it can be supported, if you want to

The donation used to be in the store build, of all places. It is here instead: a link, any amount, once or not at all — and nothing is unlocked in return, because nothing is held back any more.

2026.9.3 — beta, 4 September 2026

Housekeeping

Nothing in this release changes what the app does. It brings a years-out-of-date piece of Google’s own code up to date — a piece only the store build carries, and one Google had started warning about. The F-Droid build never carried it at all, and differs from the last one only by its version number.

2026.9.2 — beta, 2 September 2026

A new look for the icon

The mark is one blue gradient from end to end now, where it used to be dark ink with a blue accent on it. And it sits where the eye reads it as centred: the family framed its icons by a rule worked out on paper until now, and that rule has been replaced by one measured against a person moving each mark until it looked right.

2026.9.1 — beta, 1 September 2026

A new icon

The mark is the same one. What changed is how it is placed: every app in this family now frames its mark by a single rule — centred so the space around it is even all the way round, and stopping the same distance short of the circle a launcher masks with. Ten icons that were each framed by hand now line up with one another on a home screen.

The blue is a gradient rather than a flat tone, and there is a dark copy of the icon for dark surfaces. Nothing else changed in this release.

2026.8.11 — beta, 29 August 2026

No byline on the Info tab

The author’s name and their personal site have come out of the Info card. What it says now is what the app is, which version you have, and where its own site is — which is what anybody opens that screen for.

2026.8.10

A new look

This app is drawn in the design these apps now share: paper and slate, a single accent, one typeface, and thin rules where Android puts shadows. Nothing about what it does has changed.

The colours no longer come from your wallpaper — these apps have one look now — and everything reads a size larger, because the text was a step smaller than the rest of your phone.

2026.8.9 — beta, 28 August 2026

Appearance, and the same appearance as the other apps here. The Info tab and the cards every screen is drawn on are shared components now: the app’s own mark above its name, which build you are running beside the version, and the changelog folded to the last few releases. Nothing moved and nothing was renamed — from this version the look is defined in one place for all of these apps, so the next change reaches them together.

2026.8.8

The wakeups list says what the phone was doing

That list used to end in rows labelled running, wake_lock and cellular_high_tx_power — the names the parser uses internally, which are not English, not Italian and not anything else. They are sentences now. The handful of states Batbrief has nothing to say about are left out rather than printed as their internal name.

2026.8.7

Batbrief Pro

Batbrief now has a paid tier. Pro buys automatic capture and analysis on a schedule you set yourself — every few days, on a day you pick, at a time you pick — and a notification in the morning that says what was found rather than that a file arrived. It also buys a personal baseline, a before/after comparison, and unlimited history.

Prices come from the store in your own currency. The F-Droid build carries no store client at all; if you already own Pro, it stays unlocked there.

Two permissions arrive with it: internet access, for the store and for the public supporters list, and notifications. Your bug report still never leaves the phone — nothing in the app sends one anywhere, and the Privacy Policy sets out exactly what each permission is for.

Your reports are somewhere you can go

Scheduled captures used to pile up where nothing could open them. There is a list of them now, and from it you can open one, delete one, or compare two.

Clean night, and what your phone’s normal actually is

Reset the battery counters before bed and the night is measured from zero. Batbrief keeps what your better nights look like and compares against that, so “193 mA” becomes “ten times what this phone normally does” — and tells you when three bad nights in a row mean something changed.

Before / after

The screen that closes the loop: pick two nights and see whether the fix worked. Every row is a rate or a share rather than a total, because two nights are never the same length and comparing the totals reports an improvement that is only a shorter sleep.

Raw data

Export the findings and the per-app ranking as JSON or CSV, to a folder you choose.

Colour that means one thing

Severity, the split between what the phone spent on you and what it spent by itself, and every bar in the app used to be painted in fixed colours picked against one palette. They now come from the phone’s own scheme. The list of what woke the phone changed with it: every row used to be red, which made a routine scheduled wake look exactly like a Wi-Fi chip waking the phone twenty thousand times a night.

Every app row shows its working

Each row now says what its number is made of — the data it received, the jobs it ran, the wakelocks it held. The battery column is marked estimated, because it is a model rather than a measurement.

A way in that is always there

The opening screen offers all three ways to load a report, every time. Capture used to appear only when Shizuku happened to be running, so on most phones the main action was simply missing. A capture now takes the whole screen, shows real progress, and can be abandoned.

Also

2026.8.5

The report is somewhere you move around, not a row of chips

A report used to open onto eight chips in a row that had to be scrolled sideways to reach the last three. There are now five places to be — Verdict, Use, Timeline, Diagnose, Apps — on a bar that floats over the page, with the page scrolling underneath it. Wakeups, network and radio live together under Diagnose, because they are the same question asked of three different subsystems.

On a tablet, or a fold opened out, the bar becomes a rail down the side with all of it visible at once, and the verdict splits in two: the findings on the left, the one you are reading on the right.

A picture of the night

New Timeline: the window being analysed, drawn. Six lanes — when the CPU was awake, when the screen was on, when the phone was in deep Doze, when an app held a wakelock, when the modem had no signal, when Wi-Fi was up — over the battery curve.

It is the fastest way to see the thing this app was built to find. A night the screen was off for eight hours and the processor was awake for five of them is a solid band across the top lane, and no percentage says it as quickly.

Network and radio, in their own right

What was downloaded and by which app, and what the modem spent the night doing: how much of it it spent out of service, how weak the signal was while it looked, and how long it transmitted at full power. A modem searching for a network it never finds is one of the most expensive things a phone can do, and it now has somewhere to be read.

Two things that were quietly wrong

The choice of which period to analyse never appeared, although every candidate was being measured — so a report covering two nights was always read against one of them without saying so. And on those reports the chosen period was showing another one’s numbers. Both are fixed.

2026.8.4

The top of the screen is no longer behind the clock

The opening screen started at the very top of the display, so its first row sat underneath the status bar and its last row underneath the gesture bar. Both are back where they belong.

This is a change Android made rather than one this app asked for: recent versions draw every app across the whole screen, edges included, and it is then the app’s job to keep its own content clear of the system’s. The screens with a title bar were doing that already; the opening one, which has none, was not.

And a test that can see it

The tests this app gained last release all ask the same kind of question — is this thing on the screen — and a title printed on top of the clock is, technically, on the screen. So they were green while the app looked wrong.

There is now one that measures instead: it reads how tall the status bar is on the device it is running on and checks that nothing at all is drawn above that line. Run against the previous build, it fails and names the culprit.

2026.8.3

The app opens again

If you installed 2026.8.2, tapping the icon did nothing: the app closed before it drew anything at all. Update and it works — nothing you had is lost, because it never got far enough to touch anything.

What happened is worth writing down, because it is the second time this app has been bitten by the same class of problem. The published build is minified: a tool called R8 strips out everything the code does not visibly use, which is what keeps the download small. It cannot see code reached by name at run time, and one of the libraries Batbrief uses to schedule captures reaches a constructor exactly that way. R8 removed it, and the app died while Android was still starting it up.

The reason it was not caught before shipping is that the version developers run is not minified, so it worked perfectly on the bench.

Tests that run the real thing

There is now a test that builds the released app, installs it on a phone, taps it and checks that a screen appears — the only kind of test that can see this sort of failure at all. Alongside it, the whole interface is now walked automatically on two screen sizes, a phone and a large one, including every tab of a real report.

None of that is visible in the app. It is here because the honest answer to “how did this ship” is that nothing was checking, and that is the part that has changed.

2026.8.1

First release. It reads a bug report and gives you a verdict; the screens that only draw data can wait for a later version.

What it works out

Each finding is a claim, the numbers behind it, and something to do — with a button that opens the system screen which does it.

What it reads

Honest about what it cannot say

The battery history lives in a fixed-size buffer that drops its oldest entries once full, and a truncated history looks exactly like a quiet night. Some phones do not report the coulomb counter at all. Some report a power model whose numbers do not add up to the charge actually lost. In each case Batbrief says so, on the first screen, above the findings — rather than presenting a confident conclusion built on a gap.

Privacy

Batbrief asks for no permissions at all, not even internet access, and contains no analytics of any kind. Your bug report is unpacked into the app’s private cache, analysed there, and deleted when you close it. See the Privacy Policy.

Interface

Compatibility