Record a bug once.

Replay it every time?

RECORD
REPLAY

Record & replay tools promise exactly that.

But they’ve mostly been tested on everyday scenarios, not on the corner cases bugs live in.

An empirical study

Can record & replay tools

reproduce real bugs?

RERANReplayKitSARAV2S
0
user scenarios
0
non-crashing failures
0
crashes

Each one recorded, then replayed five times.

Could not be reliably recorded & replayed

Bugs are where replay breaks.

0%
User scenarios
0%
Non-crashing failures
0%
Crashes

Why replays fail.

01

Short action intervals

Fast inputs get missed, or land before a screen finishes loading.

02

Incompatible APIs

Long taps, screen rotation and the camera trip tools up.

03

Lazy trace logging

Events are logged in batches, so the final actions can go missing.

04

Tool limitations

Instrumentation overhead, and touch indicators lost on white screens.

Crashes found by automated input generators

Same seed. Same app. Different run.

0
Monkey
0
APE
0
Humanoid

of 27 apps where a second run reproduced every crash the first one found.

Replay tools must be built

for the paths bugs take.

Can You Mimic Me? Exploring the Use of Android
Record & Replay Techniques in Debugging

Zihe Song · S M Hasan Mansur · Ravishka Shemal Rathnasuriya · Yumna Fatima · Wei Yang · Kevin Moran · Wing Lam
MOBILESoft 2025 · International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems