I just hit the kill switch on my own app…
🚀 Road to 1,000,000 #Votap users — Day 65 | Current: 1348
I just hit the kill switch on my own app…
And honestly… every app should have this.
Right after pushing the new update, I wanted to test it like a normal user.
Very soon I spotted a bug. Because of a concurrency issue, some users who already had a username assigned could sometimes see the picker again… and sometimes not.
That’s the worst kind of bug.
It works.
Until it doesn’t.
Completely random. Pure “luck” depending on what runs first.
So I didn’t risk it. I flipped the app into maintenance mode. Everyone sees a simple screen, no interaction, until it’s fixed. Not fun… but way better than letting users run into broken logic.
I always knew I’d mess something up eventually 🤣
This time it was concurrency.
If you’re building an app — have a kill switch.
You’ll thank yourself later.
Fix is already in app review.
Download Votap in the App Store if you want to try it out.
More tomorrow.
Replies
Flipping to maintenance mode is basically prioritizing data integrity over uptime, which is usually the right trade-off.
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@hudson_blake Agreed. Fortunately in my case it just meant that people could choose a different username multiple times... So not an app breaking bug but still felt right to not "confuse" people and making the app unavailable for a while.
@alexandr_cizek Yeah that's fair. Sound like you made the right call given the uncertainty.
Even small inconsistencies like that can quietly erode trust, so I get why you preferred a clean pause over letting it behave "mostly fine."
How often do you test as a real user post-release?
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@daisy_morgan2 curious how fast you can trigger it 🤔 is it instant from your side or does it depend on app store delays?
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@alex_j_jemmy I assume you mean the kill switch? It's instant. It has nothing to do with the App Store. I have implemented my own system into the app so I can set the flag on the backend and it propagates for all users. Same with forcing version updates.
How did you detect the bug so quickly?
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Was this tied to async state handling?
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I personally like this kind of fast decision-making. Shutting things down quickly is better than letting silent corruption spread.
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@alexandr_cizek Same here.
I respect that decision. I’ve learned the hard way that random bugs hurt more than downtime. Kill switch = sanity saver.
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Did logs help pinpoint the issue quickly?
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What's your rollback if review takes time?
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@sienna_claire That's a great question I just thought about that. Fortunately app reviews (for me) take usually no more than a day or two which seems to be no issue with about 1k users. Do you have any practical rollback strategies?
Was there no way to return to the previous version of the app or to test the new version in a preview mode on the production server? So your user can still use the app while you fix the bug?
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I’ve pushed updates thinking everything was solid, then something random breaks. Concurrency issues are brutal.
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