Android app keeps crashing

Hi all,

LT works perfectly fine in my browser. However, since this morning my Android App keeps crashing over and over again when clicking on 'my catalog' or on 'add to catalog'. It behaves the same on both my Samsung phone and on my Samsung tablet. I already deinstalled and reinstalled the app, cleared the cache, but nothing seems to work. I came across another post about the use of some characters in titles or names, but i don't seem to have any of those characters in the book titles.

Does anyone know where to start to find a solution? :-)

Is this still happening for you? We haven't been able to reproduce, so far, but want to make sure you have access.

Another silly check: have you turned your phone off and on? Just for good measure...

Can you tell me the OS of your phone and/or tablet? Thanks!

I am in the same situation. App worked perfectly for some days (I have a little less that 200 books in my current library) but crashed unexpectedly (without any previous fail, warning or abnormal circumstances) and has not worked anymore.
Crashed on the first week of september and currently it's not working. It flashes the app first screen for less than a second and then stops.
I've reviewed in the web my book informations, just to be sure there is not any strange character there (a non-ISO symbol, for instance), but I found anything. I've also delayed some doubled initials, just to be sure... and nothing.
It's annoying, app brought me so flexibility and fastness... :-(
I uninstalled and reinstalled, checked my free memory on the cell, installed the app on my tablet...
I use Android 11, Xiaomi Redmi 9 cell and Samsung Tab A tablet. Any new clue about this mistery will be welcome. Thanks!

Thanks for your information, @SilentCircle, and sorry for the trouble! I haven't been able to reproduce your issue yet, but I'm seeing if we can get someone on the team to test on a real Android device/simulator. We'll post here with updates. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Update: we are still investigating this in different simulators with different Android OS versions. Hopefully we'll have some progress to report soon.

Well, I've tried to reinstall the app and configure it with different profiles in my cell, and even in an older one (Xiaomi Redmi 6, with Android 10)... but the app still crashes :(

Mine crashes too.... On android click my catalog

Any update on this app crashing issue? Installed the LT app today and worked well for about one hour. While trying to scan Gunther Grass' Dog Days book, it crashed and now every time I open the app it crashes. Uninstalled the app, reboot the phone and reinstalled it but it still crashes.
Please help,
Thanks

Sorry for the trouble, we haven't had a chance to dive into this yet, I'm afraid, but I've reminded the developers about this and they will make time for it very soon! Thanks for your patience in the meantime, we'll be sure to post here with any updates or progress.

Updating this bug report with a new example. A member reports via email that the Android app keeps crashing when she attempts to access the Author page of the Your Catalog section. When verifying, I found it crashed simply by tapping on Your Catalog. When a specific book is removed from the catalog, this problem does not occur, but it begins anew if the book is added again.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Log into the DateTheWord account on the Android app
2. Tap on Your Collection
3. This often causes the app to crash for me, but sometimes not. If not, tap on Authors.
4. App closes. My phone gives me a message that the app has a bug
5. Log into the DateTheWord account on the website, and remove "Assisi of St Francis" (ISBN: 9781436678506) from the catalog
6. Attempt to access Your Collection on the app again
7. The app no longer closes when accessing Your Collection
8. Add "Assisi of St Francis" (ISBN: 9781436678506) again, on the website
9. Attempt to access Your Collection on the app again
10. The app once again closes, when tapping on Your Collection

Unfortunaly, this problem is not yet solved... I've exported to Excel my entire collection, just to check all the content to be sure there is not any non-standard character hidden somewhere...
Is there any list of specific "problematic" characters?
Thanks

Some of the fields in my TSV export are rather toxic. I.e. most records are unicode strings with TAB in between, but not all. If the app looks at these records without proper caution I can easily see it crashing. (I think the worst data are to be found in the Subjects field. Stuff like: Vietnam War, 1961-1975 > Destruction and pillage > Vietnam > B��en L�c )

I'm on a unix box, so I use this command: iconv -c -t UTF-8
to sanitize the export file before letting any of my scripts touch it.

Received a report today of a user who is having problems with the android app crashing and losing data that they had added ( They emailed in Italian, the message may have been slightly lost in translation)
LT app version 1.1.3, on Android 4.0.3. They tried deleting and re-downloading, with mixed success. Can't confirm this for android, but I have been having similar issues with crashing on iPhone- I will write up a report tomorrow morning!

I also have the issue at the point that I didn't proceed to catalogue my books.

When I open the app and scroll through the catalogue (all books), it crashes. I only indexed 178 books. It crashed when some next books are loaded. I can't determin which one causes the crash.

Android is now alerting me that the app keeps crashing and is bugged.

I have a the newest samsung and all is updated.

I found the reason for the crash I think. There was a book with an ' in the name. Removed the book and the app isn't crashing anymore.

Latest LibraryThing App, Android 14
Been working rather well, variously entering books by scanning ISBN codes, entering/searching manually, and entering books on the PC.
When I scanned two ISBN codes this morning, the app crashed, and I have yet to get it back to work. Clearing cache and even data to no avail. However, I notice that the two books I scanned have not been added to my books.

When I added the ISBN for the two books manually (one was found on Amazon.com, the second one I had to compile manually), the app stopped crashing.

>15 IlliasM: and >16 csant: Thanks for the info. I'll try and track down where the problem is in the data pipeline.

Me too.
The website is fine but my phone keeps alerting me to the fact that the app keeps crashing when I try to delete a book. Otherwise its fine.

>18 rdsellick: mine crashes when I try to delete books too

Hm. Ok. Clearly something has changed at the Android OS level to cause these. We will have to investigate where it's cropping up within specific data. Thanks for the reports.

Library things has been working great on my Oppo A72 Android V11.1. I now moved to a new phone, Oppo Reno12 Android 15. Now the app crashes whenever I try to delete a book. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and it still does this. Thanks

Reposting here from another topic since I believe the delete crash is being tracked here.

Some else to note about the delete crash.
The first time you do this the book is not deleted, but if you go back in and try to delete the book a second time the app will crash again but this time the book does get deleted.

I'm also having the app crash on delete. A week or 2 ago it crashed on delete when I was trying to remove a book that was incorrectly added by the barcode scan, several attempts to delete resulted in a crash each time but no actual removal. I was able to remove it from the website.
Today, I've deleted a few duplicates, and each time it crashes the app, but they are gone when I reopen it.

I am still having issues with my app on my oppo reno12. Now when I open the app and click on 'your catalogue' or 'add to catalogue' the app crashes and my phone displays a message 'library think keeps stopping.' The app is completely unusable on my phone now because it instantly crashes. Any solutions?? It is super frustrating because I use it all the time! I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app several times. I've also restarted my phone, and checked for updates. No success.

>24 mh.p:

Given that the servers seem to be under attack, the problem may well be at LT's end at the moment. I wouldn't worry about crashes as long as the whole system is failing.

Of course, the medium-term solution (until they app is updated) is to use the web site on your phone rather than the app.

Bumping this, as I have additional members reporting that the Android app is crashing, whenever they attempt to access either the Your Catalog or Add to Catalog pages.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Log into the Hfbardell account in the Android app

2. Tap on either Your Catalog or Add to Catalog

3. The app will close. This happens every time

Note: this member is using a Motorola phone with Android 14.

Additional note: I have had the exact same report from member Berni396, but have been unable to duplicate.

Further note: This is also not occurring in my own accounts, when logged into the app. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S23, Android 16

Hi, encountered the same issue with the Android app: LibraryThing keeps crashing every time I clicked on Your catalog or Add to catalog.

After some troubleshooting, I've found that the "culprit" was a particular book recently added to the catalog: an italian edition of this memoir by Catherine Deneuve
https://www.librarything.com/work/1116535/
ISBN 8820039346 / 9788820039349

Apparently, the problem was caused not by some strange/illegal characters in the book record (tried to remove the ' in the title or the & in the publisher name with no success), but by the automatic Amazon-provided cover, which is the first cover you can see here: https://imgur.com/a/TlJyAqe
After I changed it to a custom cover, the app started working as usual again.

Hope this can be helpful!

>27 wolkrasgt: Interesting!

An interesting test, for anyone here experiencing crashes, might be to turn off all of your Amazon covers (at least temporarily) on the website at https://www.librarything.com/settings/covers. (Uncheck the "Show Amazon covers" setting.) Then see how the LibraryThing App (restarted) behaves.

If this happens to fix any of the crashes for folks, I'd be very interested to hear it.

Found another case: https://www.librarything.com/work/6076976/work/305717630
ISBN 8804562196 / 9788804562191

Adding the book causes the app to crash instantly, changed the Amazon cover with a custom one and the app returns to business as usual.

Maybe there are some automatic covers that are strange/unsupported formats or contain illegal/escape characters in the raw data?

I think you're definitely onto something, there, one of our developers was able to verify this in the Android App. We have a new app coming up on the horizon, so this may need to wait until then, but it will be worth remembering if this comes up in the future!

>28 kristilabrie: Disabling amazon covers fixed the app crashing on all my devices.

I also experienced the bug crash when deleting books.