Enable Session Replay on Android

Overview

Follow this guide to enable Session Replay for Real User Monitoring (RUM) in your Android app.

Session Replay captures a visual sequence of user interactions in your app by recording periodic screenshots. This allows you to analyze what the user saw before, during, and after an issue — helping you quickly pinpoint the source of errors, performance slowdowns, or unexpected behavior. Use Session Replay to recreate the user experience and better understand the context behind each session.

Prerequisites

Before enabling Session Replay, you must install and initialize the Coralogix Android RUM SDK in your app.

Session Replay by default

Session Replay on Android:

• Evaluates UI one frame per second (FPS) and captures only if the layout changed since the previous screenshot.
• Masks all text inputs (when maskAllTexts is enabled).
• Redacts sensitive input field types (passwords, emails, numbers, etc.) if specified.
• Samples 100% of sessions by default.

You can customize these defaults using the configuration options below.

Configure and initialize

Use the SessionReplayOptions class to configure capture behavior, privacy masking, and sampling.

Example

import android.app.Application
import com.coralogix.android.sdk.session_replay.SessionReplay
import com.coralogix.android.sdk.session_replay.model.SessionReplayOptions
import com.coralogix.android.sdk.internal.infrastructure.display.enums.EditTextType

class MyApp : Application() {
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        val options = SessionReplayOptions(
            captureScale = 0.5f, // Scale screenshots to half resolution
            captureCompressQuality = 0.8f, // Compress images for size optimization
            sessionRecordingSampleRate = 80, // Capture 80% of sessions
            autoStartSessionRecording = true, // Start recording automatically
            maskAllTexts = false, // Do not mask all text by default
            maskInputFieldsOfTypes = listOf(
                EditTextType.PASSWORD,
                EditTextType.EMAIL
            )
        )
        SessionReplay.initialize(this, options)
    }
}

Options reference

Configuration fields for SessionReplayOptions:

Option	Type	Description	Default
autoStartSessionRecording	Boolean	Start recording automatically	true
captureScale	Float	Screenshot resolution scale factor (0–1). Lower values reduce size and memory usage	0.5f
captureCompressQuality	Float	Image compression (0–1). Lower values reduce fidelity and file size	1.0f
sessionRecordingSampleRate	Int (0–100)	% of sessions to capture	100
maskAllTexts	Boolean	Redact all on-screen text	true
maskInputFieldsOfTypes	List<EditTextType>	Redact only specific input fields (e.g., password, email, phone)	emptyList()

Image capture triggers

Screenshots are captured during session replay in the following cases:

• User taps anywhere on the screen.
• User navigates between activities or fragments.
• Screen layout changes.
• Error or crash occurs.
• Manual screen capture event via SessionReplay.captureScreenshot().

Android Session Replay combines a 1 FPS layout-change sampling *with *event-based captures (click, error), so you still see key moments even if they occur between checks

Start and stop recording

If autoStartSessionRecording is false, you can manually control recording:

SessionReplay.startSessionRecording()
SessionReplay.stopSessionRecording()

Manually capture screen

Use captureScreenshot to capture a specific moment in the session:

SessionReplay.captureScreenshot()

Privacy and masking

Coralogix provides flexible masking options to help you meet privacy requirements:

• Text masking: Use maskAllTexts to redact all on-screen text, or selectively mask only input fields via maskInputFieldsOfTypes.
• Input field masking: Protect sensitive data such as passwords, emails, phone numbers, and credit card fields by specifying their EditTextType.
• View masking: You can programmatically mark a specific view as sensitive:

mySensitiveView.maskView()

This ensures that the view’s contents are blurred in session replays.

Tip: Always verify your masking rules in staging before going live, especially for sensitive inputs like login screens and payment forms.