# Demystifying user journeys: Revolutionizing troubleshooting with auto tracking

[Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab) · Alex Prokofiev · Dec 23, 2025

## Summary

Tracking user journeys across hundreds of mobile UI components via manual clickstream instrumentation frequently caused data gaps and prolonged issue resolution. Grab designed AutoTrack, an SDK that automatically records application lifecycle states, launch triggers, user interactions, and screen contexts. The system monitors transitions across foreground, background, and inactive states alongside entry points like deep links and push notifications. On the client side, AutoTrack captures complete screen hierarchy metadata from native Android activities, fragments, and iOS view controllers, redacting sensitive data to comply with privacy regulations. This automated trace enables engineering teams to reproduce elusive bugs, route incidents to domain owners, and generate automated UI test cases from real-world usage patterns.

## Takeaways

- Manual clickstream instrumentation often fails at scale due to overlooked UI components, creating fragmented session records that delay issue triage.
- AutoTrack leverages Android Activity, Fragment, and iOS UIViewController lifecycle events to capture screen hierarchies while redacting sensitive data for privacy compliance.
- Recorded session hierarchies are used to train AI models that generate HTML reproductions of user interactions and seed automated UI test scripts.

**Tags:** [Android](https://yomu.fyi/topic/android), [iOS](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ios), [Observability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/observability), [Reliability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/reliability), [Testing](https://yomu.fyi/topic/testing)

[Read original post](https://engineering.grab.com/auto-track-sdk)