Say hello to iOS Health team at Monzo 🍎 🩺

[leewatkins]

@Peter_G

is there an equivalent for Android folks?

No, we don’t have an Android equivalent at the moment. Generally we see fewer logouts, crashes, performance issues and broken flows in the Android app, so we’re focussing on getting the iOS app into a comparable place.

[leewatkins]

@SebH

how detailed do you want our bug reports to be, in general?

The more details you can provide, the more likely we are to replicate the crash and be able to fix it, so if you can be super detailed, that would be a great help.

@SebH

Are you just looking for trends or do you want us to document specific bugs in detail (I usually do this on Testflight but I’ve never been sure if I’m being helpful or not)?

We’d be happy with both - if you notice trends, that may point to a specific set of problems that we need to fix. But typically that would take more investigating before we can fully understand the problem. Having more detailed info about specific crashes helps us get to the bottom of them quicker. Reports via TestFlight are very helpful, so please do keep those up and thank you for them!

@SebH

Do you want all Testflight users to do this (even iOS beta users) or are you more interested in users on stable/current releases?

Both are helpful, but I’d say that TestFlight/beta crashes are more helpful - if something new has appeared it’s much easier to look over the last week’s-worth of changes to see what could have caused the problem, and helps us “nip them in the bud” before they become “known issues”.

@SebH

In the past, I’ve submitted detailed reports and then re-submitted short reports when the same issue occurs again. Do you want us to do that every time?

If you’re seeing the same issue repeatedly, giving us one detailed report and then simply referencing the detailed report in subsequent reports is perfect

@SebH

helpful for the team to set out a “how to write bug reports” post

That’s a great idea, thank you! We’ll look at putting something like that together

[Revels]

@patrice58

Was that question even answered? Nope

Posts like this are what stop staff posting.

Peter asked his question at 11:48, you posted at 10pm to have a dig that someone hadn’t answered his question. There had been one post by someone in that team at 11:52, and quite a detailed reply, so I would imagine he started writing it before Peter posted. They may not have even seen it.

They didn’t post again yesterday, they have this actual job to do! But this morning, back to the working day, Lee is posting and replying to questions.

Lets try our best not to scare staff away! We want more involvement, not less!

[SebH]

That’s for the detailed replies!
I’ll be sure to keep the bug reports coming.

@leewatkins

Both are helpful, but I’d say that TestFlight/beta crashes are more helpful - if something new has appeared it’s much easier to look over the last week’s-worth of changes to see what could have caused the problem, and helps us “nip them in the bud” before they become “known issues”.

A final question: there was a recent iOS beta (I think it was iOS 15.0 beta) where Monzo just crashed continually and you got the Testflight crash notification almost every time you unlocked the phone. In that sort of situation, do you still want us to submit the crash every time? I was doing for a while but then realised you were probably waiting to see if future iOS betas fixed the issue and therefore a fix wasn’t a priority - so I stopped submitting those. Would you prefer the rule to be “just always submit”? Currently, I do default to an “if in doubt, submit a report” but don’t bother every single time if it’s something like that where you probably aren’t rolling out a fix yet but are already aware of the issue.

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

Very late to this thread (had a busy a few days).

First of all, thank you for setting this team up. It’s very reassuring. The Monzo experience for the past 6 months on iOS hasn’t been very positive at all, so it’s good that it’s being taken seriously.

Especially when half the time sharing the issues on here it can feel a bit like talking into a void as others are unable to reproduce or haven’t noticed themselves.

I tend to stay away from beta software where I can, which means unless I’m being inconvenienced by a bug with the App Store version of Monzo, I tend not to be using the TestFlight build at all.

What’s the best way to help with this stuff for those of us not utilising the TestFlight build? The app still directs us to the forums for here for bug reports, so is this the only/preferred outlet, or is there something else you’d prefer me to do in addition to or instead of flagging on here?

[Serialswitcher]

@leewatkins

then we hope to move on to slow app performance (slow scrolling, glitches that make you miss buttons, taps that don’t take you anywhere or don’t give you any feedback, those sorts of things)

Yes please

I love Monzo but the sluggy performance, unresponsive buttons and jittery animations are making the app borderline unusable sometimes.

Love seeing it recognised

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

Just a quick tip if your app is like this right now.

Quit the Monzo app (flick it away from the multitasking view).

Head to the settings app, search for Monzo, and within Monzo toggle on reset session, then relaunch the app.

This will sign you out, and you’ll need to sign back in, but it should restore the app to peak performance for a while.

[FunsoX (Funsò)]

Hello ioz team,

So whats the issue with the monzo app constantly logging one off?

At first it was crashing and to reinstall severally.

Now it logs one out and have to start all over again.

It has become unreliable and changing one’s mind on how perfect monzo is.

I now also use an android phone and not had those issues yet.

Why has monzo been unanle to resolve this isssue after several updates and considering this has been happning for months.

Cheers,
Olu

[patrice58 (Leon)]

Yeah I still think that could have been done at the time but it is what it is. Better late then never and all that.

[Serialswitcher]

It does seem to make a difference actually! Thanks for the tip

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

@l33t

Out of interest how long have you had your current profile for on iOS (aka since you did a fresh install without restoring a backup)?
There have been BIG issues with people running beta builds in the past and compounding problems in their backup saves over time but I dont know if 16 had as many quirks as 15 and 14 did.

Feel like it’s probably better to continue this little off shoot in this thread unless there’s somewhere better off it since it’s not really related to Chase.

I do a fresh install every major release. New devices are always set up as new, no restoring from backups (don’t even have backups turned on).

Don’t run the iOS betas on my personal devices either, which includes my phone where I use Monzo.

I suspect like Safari, how we use the app and what’s going on inside it will impact how much battery it uses too. My time is largely spent in trends. When I’m opening the app it’s more of than not because of a notification or to check on my balance tab in trends (where I will usually play with the slider a bit because the haptics make it fun and I’m a fidget toy person). That’s probably more intensive than someone who opens it to check recent transactions and closes it again.

The current Trends performance issues might be playing a role too. The crashing bug has hopefully been fixed now (thanks @leewatkins!) (which I should probably now mark as the solution to my thread!) so that shouldn’t be affecting things anymore! There is a memory leak (I think) somewhere though, which more folks than just me are experiencing this time and I’m having to use the reset section every few weeks or so when the app becomes unusably sluggish and unresponsive. Phone gets hot in this situation too, so no doubt is something else impacting battery life.

The battery life hit from Monzo is not significant enough that I consider it an issue per se, but it’s not as good as I’d normally expect for a banking app either. It’s not terrible, it just feels like it’s not been properly optimised for later iPhones models and iOS version to keep it as efficient as it probably could be. The most visible representation of that is how the app was never, and still hasn’t been updated for the new iPhone screen sizes. It’s very hard to see, but the interface elements are ever so slightly larger in Monzo compared to other apps because of it. I’ve posted about that somewhere on here before too. Most people will probably never notice it, but it’s something I can always see whenever the keyboard comes up and it throws me. I can touch type the way I type on a mechanical keyboard (from muscle memory so I don’t need to see the keys) and remain very accurate. The very subtle change to the keyboard in Monzo’s app vs most others that have since been updated really throws that into whack and I can’t type anymore.

Edit: here’s where I’ve mentioned the screen size thing before, with screenshots that capture the very subtle difference:

iPhone 12

All the default apps are, and a good number of third parties, but a few appear is if they’re using a scaled up iPhone X/xs/11 pro UI, where everything is just ever so slightly bigger. I wasn’t sure if my eyes were deceiving me, but here are a few screenshots to compare the keyboard sizes: [image] Left: mail app, right: Monzo It’s not a new screen size but the view port is new! It’s narrower than the 11, but also taller than the 11.

Edit 2: off the back of remembering this, just decided to test it again to check it was actually still the case, and it does appear, that at least the core iOS elements are no longer scaled when comparing side by side in Pixelmator to the mail app. no idea when they actually fixed it, but this is why apps benefit from usefully detailed release notes! I had no idea it had been fixed.

[l33t]

@patrice58

{BLURB}

I appear to have touched a nerve. I will remove my post for fear of it being too tongue in cheek for you.

@N26throwaway

here’s where I’ve mentioned the screen size thing before, with screenshots that capture the very subtle difference:

I never spotted it when I went to my 13 Pro lol. I think I may have noticed it more on a Max maybe though. I had to look at your screenshots to see what was wrong.

@N26throwaway

I do a fresh install every major release. New devices are always set up as new, no restoring from backups (don’t even have backups turned on).

Don’t run the iOS betas on my personal devices either, which includes my phone where I use Monzo.

That eliminates a few things anyway, I dont think 16 Beta had as many issues that lingered on when it came out finally but I know there was a weird one where a tester had a dialogue problem with images/text (system dialogue prompt but cant remember where it was) and it continued in the RC to which they thought it had not been fixed but a fresh device install fixed it.
I had heard of really weird things happening to profiles in previous betas as well that cause RC issues.

@N26throwaway

When I’m opening the app it’s more of than not because of a notification or to check on my balance tab in trends (where I will usually play with the slider a bit because the haptics make it fun and I’m a fidget toy person). That’s probably more intensive than someone who opens it to check recent transactions and closes it again.

The current Trends performance issues might be playing a role too.

Yeah I dont go into Trends often, maybe once a week depending on the spending pattern as my spending is quite regular.

@N26throwaway

Phone gets hot in this situation too, so no doubt is something else impacting battery life.

Hot is really not a good sign, I mean that sounds like its hitting the cpu hard which will slaughter battery life like a game.

To be honest you having such a borked experience must be very useful for them to see if it can be recreated.

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

The trouble with this one (the one I suspect is a memory leak) is finding a reliable way to recreate it. It’s affecting a good few folks, so that’s positive, means there’s more data to collate. But I haven’t been able to discern if it’s related to the known trends performance issues (which should be getting fixed soon, if they weren’t in the most recent update), or if it’s something else. The addition of overview to labs correlates too, but doesn’t directly cause the issue (it happens even if it’s disabled).

I’ve found a reliable remedy for it, which is the reset session tip I’ve shared above. It’s worked for everyone who’s tried it. But I’m still prodding and guessing at what actually causes it. My best guess right now is it’s tied to your transactions, specifically new ones. So the more you use your card, the more transactions you make, the faster the symptoms of a memory leak start to present themselves. It’s still very much a guess though. If you let it get far enough without resetting session, the app will eventually crash, at which point if you’re on TestFlight you can submit a report.

It could just be some innocent completely unrelated innocent thing somewhere else in the app and I’m just zeroing in on the wrong correlations. But until I figure out what’s causing it, I’m not going to be able to determine a reliable way to reproduce the issue. One of the reasons I’ve been reluctant to start a thread for it, as for all I know it could have been tied to the crashing issue, or the trends issue, which are both known.

I don’t think it’s related to historic transactions. You’ve tried that. I’ve tried replicating it, so that was probably just a fluke correlation too. Next best guess would be it’s related to plus, as that seems to be a common thread, but it could just be that most of us on here are likely to be subscribed to plus or premium.

I do tend to be more bug prone than most. I don’t know if that’s just because of my field and I notice them more than most, or if it’s just through my tenacity to play with things until they break and then try to figure out how/why and recreate it. Or I’m just more sensitive to them. Thinking back to my crashing thread, one or two folks eventually did share it’s something they experience too but just dismissed it is a quirk, so that could certainly be at play too.

Monzo happen to have a community where I can come to report them too, which I generally do, because it’s something I use daily and is important enough to warrant it. With most other things, if I can fix it with basic troubleshooting I’ll just forget it about it. It’s apathy, and I suspect that’s how the vast majority of folks will tend to feel until it starts to become a plague.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

Just adding a few thoughts that are relevant to the title and aim of this thread.

General

• I’ve just re-installed monzo onto a new device (iPhone 14 Pro) and I’ve noticed a significant improvement in performance so far. None of the lagging on the feed accessed from the latest activity feed and currently none in trends either.
• Now, this may be because in that time the Monzo team have been busy pushing performance improvements to the main app (I’m not currently using the TestFlight version) or the fact the app is a fresh install on a new device. I’ll monitor over time and let you know if it get’s progressively worse or not
• Trends doesn’t seem to hang yet, no accounts connected in and a fresh install may be helping with this

Specific Bugs

• I’m still seeing it where if you click onto the “latest activity feed” and select a transaction, when you go back instead of taking you back to the feed, it spoofs back to the overview screen.

[leewatkins]

@SebH

Would you prefer the rule to be “just always submit”?

I’d say that if you’ve submitted a few reports for the same issue, its probably on our radar, so you don’t need to submit all of them. Once we’ve released a fix we’ll let you all know, and then might ask you to submit another batch in case we haven’t quite nailed the fix.

[leewatkins]

@N26throwaway

What’s the best way to help with this stuff for those of us not utilising the TestFlight build? The app still directs us to the forums for here for bug reports, so is this the only/preferred outlet, or is there something else you’d prefer me to do in addition to or instead of flagging on here?

Flagging issues on the forum and tagging us is perfect, and probably the most useful way to share info. If you’ve managed to find a way to repeatedly cause the bug/crash, writing up the steps to make it happen is super helpful.

And finally, if you’d share crash reports (as I’ve described here) that would also be really helpful.

[leewatkins]

Hey Olu

Sorry to hear about this problem. We’ve been aware of this and have made a few changes to try and fix this. iOS App versions from 5.7.0 onwards should be more stable and stop logging you out randomly. If you keep seeing this happen, please report is and pop me a DM with the email address that you use on your Monzo account and I can take a look into this specific problem.

[SebH]

For what it’s worth: I had been logged out randomly quite a few times up until recently, but since that release Monzo has not asked me to login again! So the fix does seem to be working.

@N26throwaway

I do a fresh install every major release. New devices are always set up as new, no restoring from backups (don’t even have backups turned on).

Don’t run the iOS betas on my personal devices either, which includes my phone where I use Monzo.

I’m terrible for this!

I haven’t done a proper (no backup restore) fresh install since 2016 and I run betas on my phone continually. However, the extent to which this causes problems is a bit overblown. I very rarely encounter any issue which isn’t fixed shortly after it comes up (in the next beta build or two, usually) and almost never is it significantly impactful to using the phone. Generally, RC releases “wipe out” any beta cruft ready for the next beta to start and I occasionally install updates via IPSW files to avoid the cumulative impact of constant OTA updates. Once or twice, I’ve had to use iMazing to update via IPSW in DFU mode without losing data - and even that has got my device up and running again. This has been in cases where an OTA update has crashed on me.

Of course, I do generally assume that bugs could be a specific result of my circumstances and not general - but then that’s the point of bug reports, as I see it. They gather the diagnostics to allow assessing if it’s a “beta issue”, something else unique to me, or a general app bug. The more other people submit reports too, the more they can be cross-analysed. I always run the Testflight Monzo app for this reason.