Thousands of iOS apps started crashing because of Google (wait, what?)

App crashes aren’t new, but they usually happen with new software versions, new smartphones, or app updates. They are also usually fairly limited in scope. However, Google’s Firebase SDK reportedly experienced an issue a few hours ago that was catastrophic enough to crash thousands of iOS apps and send unsuspecting developers into a frenzy.

According to a now-resolved thread on the Google Firebase GitHub issue tracker, a problem in Google Analytics for Firebase iOS caused apps to crash at launch. Since thousands of apps rely on Firebase for backend development and analytics, they all started crashing around the same time, sparking a flurry of panicked posts from developers wondering what had happened.

One developer said they burned through a large number of AI tokens while trying to debug their app, thinking they had broken something. Several other developers figured the issue was related to Firebase, but couldn’t do anything except report it to Google and wait for a fix, watching their app crash numbers rise by the minute.

Google rolled out a fix a couple of hours later, and developers started seeing the crash numbers dwindle. However, the company said that due to caching, some apps could crash for up to four hours after the fix was deployed. As of an hour ago, some developers reported that crashes had dropped significantly, though they were still much higher than normal.

Google hasn’t fully explained what caused the issue, and the Firebase Status Dashboard doesn’t show any logged incidents. The company may still be working to fully resolve the issue and identify the root cause.

We have reached out to Google for comment and will update this story when we hear back.