--- title: Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase | daily.dev description: The Firebase team describes how Google's Santa Tracker Android app uses Firebase Analytics, Crash Reporting, and Remote Config to monitor and tune the app... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase | daily.dev og:description: The Firebase team describes how Google's Santa Tracker Android app uses Firebase Analytics, Crash Reporting, and Remote Config to monitor and tune the app... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/wyYHn9xXS.png og:image:alt: Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase **[Firebase](https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The Firebase team describes how Google's Santa Tracker Android app uses Firebase Analytics, Crash Reporting, and Remote Config to monitor and tune the app during its short but massive December usage spike. Custom analytics events and user properties revealed that 85% of players scored zero stars in the Penguin Swim mini-game, and Crash Reporting helped surface an OutOfMemoryError on low-RAM devices. Using Remote Config, the team adjusted the SwimmingObstacleDensity variable from 1.5 to 1.1 without republishing the app, dropping the zero-star rate to 70%, and kept a kill-switch ready to disable the game for specific device types if crashes escalated. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I fix a game difficulty problem in a live Android app without pushing an app update? Use Firebase Remote Config to adjust gameplay variables remotely. In Santa Tracker's Penguin Swim mini-game, changing the SwimmingObstacleDensity variable from 1.5 to 1.1 made obstacles easier to dodge and instantly dropped the percentage of users scoring zero stars from about 85% to 70%, with the change taking effect over the air with no new app version. _daily.dev helps developers researching Remote Config find real production tuning examples like this one._ ### How can I diagnose an OutOfMemoryError crash that only happens on some Android devices? Combine Firebase Crash Reporting with Analytics event logs to trace the sequence of user actions leading up to the crash. In one case, an OutOfMemoryError in a mini-game only occurred on low-RAM devices after repeated gameplay, a pattern that wasn't caught in normal QA but was visible from analytics events attached to the crash log. _Developers chasing device-specific crashes track debugging approaches like this via daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#android](https://daily.dev/tags/android), [#firebase](https://daily.dev/tags/firebase) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:21:32.736Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:47:09.802Z","description":"The Firebase team describes how Google's Santa Tracker Android app uses Firebase Analytics, Crash Reporting, and Remote Config to monitor and tune the app...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7ed721de96163685d26ab7e314be3ebc?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7ed721de96163685d26ab7e314be3ebc?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Firebase","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Firebase","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--i395oqZH--/f_auto,q_auto/v1787487448/logos/firebase-blog?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"android,firebase","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Firebase","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Monitoring Santa Tracker with Firebase"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/monitoring-santa-tracker-with-firebase-wyyhn9xxs#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How can I fix a game difficulty problem in a live Android app without pushing an app update?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Use Firebase Remote Config to adjust gameplay variables remotely. In Santa Tracker's Penguin Swim mini-game, changing the SwimmingObstacleDensity variable from 1.5 to 1.1 made obstacles easier to dodge and instantly dropped the percentage of users scoring zero stars from about 85% to 70%, with the change taking effect over the air with no new app version. daily.dev helps developers researching Remote Config find real production tuning examples like this one."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How can I diagnose an OutOfMemoryError crash that only happens on some Android devices?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Combine Firebase Crash Reporting with Analytics event logs to trace the sequence of user actions leading up to the crash. In one case, an OutOfMemoryError in a mini-game only occurred on low-RAM devices after repeated gameplay, a pattern that wasn't caught in normal QA but was visible from analytics events attached to the crash log. Developers chasing device-specific crashes track debugging approaches like this via daily.dev."}}]} ```