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Recently noticed some difference in Users count of screen_view and session_start events. Which one will be used in Active Users calculation?

Thanks in advance.

muratiakos
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Bill
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2 Answers2

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In short session_start is an application-level metric, while screen_view is a lower level event about views within your app. So if your app has more screens, the later will be generally higher count. A bit more precisely:

screen_view when a screen transition occurs and any of the following criteria are met:

  • No screen was previously set
  • The new screen name differs from the previous screen name
  • The new screen-class name differs from the previous screen-class name
  • The new screen id differs from the previous screen id

session_start on the other hand is when a user engages the app for more than the minimum session duration after a period of inactivity that exceeds the session timeout duration.

Please refer to more details in the Firebase docs:

muratiakos
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  • Thanks. But I am looking for the user count and NOT event count. I assume the user count is the same in both cases, irrespective of the sessions or screen views. – Bill Mar 19 '19 at 06:51
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We just had this question asked of us, and looking at the screen_view metrics provided some possible explanation. Firebase released an update to how they track sessions, see here.

https://firebase.googleblog.com/2018/12/new-changes-sessions-user-engagement.html

So in theory using the old calculation if you have users who just quickly opened the app for less than 10 seconds, it would count as a screen_view but not as a session_start. This means that your session_start user count would be less than your screen_view user count.

Based on the update, this scenario will no longer be the case and they should start to match up moving forward.

EDIT: Note that in order to use the new calculation, you'll need to install the latest Firebase SDK with you app.

Jim Leavitt
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