The Android Open Source Project maintains a public issue tracker where you can report bugs and request features for the core Android software stack. (For details on this issue tracker, please see the Reporting Bugs page). Reporting bugs is great (thank you!), but what happens to a bug report once you file it? This page describes the life of a bug.

The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) issue tracker is intended only for bugs and feature requests related to the core Android software stack, and is a technical tool for the Open Source community.

This is not a customer support forum. For support information, see the Nexus and Pixel help centers. Support for other devices is provided by the device manufacturers or by the carriers selling those devices.

Support for Google applications is through Google's support site. Support for third-party applications is with each application's developer, e.g. through the contact information provided on Google Play.

Here's the life of a bug, in a nutshell:

  1. A bug is filed, and has the state "New".
  2. An AOSP maintainer periodically reviews and triages bugs. Bugs are triaged into one of four buckets: New, Open, No-Action, or Resolved.
  3. Each bucket includes a number of states that provide more detail on the fate of the issue.
  4. Bugs marked as "Resolved" will eventually be included in a future release of the Android software.

Bucket details

We use the Status field in Issue Tracker to specify the status of an issue in the resolution process. This is consistent with the definitions specified in the Issue Tracker documentation.

New issues

New issues include bug reports that are not yet being acted upon. The two states are:

Open issues

This bucket contains bugs that need action, but which are still unresolved, pending a change to the source code.

Typically, a bug starts in Assigned, and remains there until someone intends to resolve it, at which point it enters Accepted. However, note that this isn't a guarantee, and it's not uncommon for bugs to go from Assigned to one of the Resolved states.

In general, if a bug is in one of these Open states, the AOSP team has recognized it as a legitimate issue, and a high-quality contribution fixing that bug is likely to get accepted. However, it's impossible to guarantee a fix in time for any particular release.

No-Action issues

This bucket contains bugs that are deemed to not require any action.

Resolved issues

This bucket contains bugs that have had action taken, and are now considered resolved.

Other stuff

The states and lifecycle above are how we generally try to track software. However, Android contains a lot of software and gets a correspondingly large number of bugs. As a result, sometimes bugs don't make it through all the states in a formal progression. We do try to keep the system up to date, but we tend to do so in periodic "bug sweeps" where we review the database and make updates.