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Other WPF and WinForms APIs

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Important

Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

Adjust the log level

You can control the amount of log messages that show up from App Center in the console. Use the LogLevel API to enable additional logging while debugging. By default, it's set to ASSERT for the App Store environments and WARN otherwise.

To have as many log messages as possible, use LogLevel.Verbose.

AppCenter.LogLevel = LogLevel.Verbose;

Identify installations

The App Center SDK creates a UUID for each device once the app is installed. This identifier remains the same for a device when the app is updated and a new one is generated only when the app is re-installed. The following API is useful for debugging purposes.

System.Guid? installId = await AppCenter.GetInstallIdAsync();

Identify users

The App Center SDK supports setting a user ID that's used to augment crash reports. To use this capability:

  1. Configure the App Center SDK by calling AppCenter.Start(...) as described in the App Center SDK Getting started guide.
  2. Set a userID in the SDK using the following code:
AppCenter.SetUserId("your-user-id");

After setting a user ID, you can use App Center's search feature to search for specific crash reports for the ID. Learn more in App Center's search documentation.

Note

The value for the user ID is limited to 256 characters. It will be shown with your crash reports but not used for aggregation or counts of affected users. In case you set user ID multiple times, only the last user ID will be used. You need to set the user ID yourself before each application launch, because this value isn't stored by the SDK between launches.

Disable all services at runtime

If you want to disable all App Center services at once, use the Enabled property. When disabled, the SDK won't forward any information to App Center.

AppCenter.SetEnabledAsync(false);

To enable all services at once again, use the same API but pass true as a parameter.

AppCenter.SetEnabledAsync(true);

You don't need to await this call to make other API calls (such as IsEnabledAsync) consistent.

The state is persisted in the device's storage across application launches.

Change state of service in runtime

Enable or disable the services at the runtime with following code:

Analytics.SetEnabledAsync(false);

Disallow network requests

In the App Center SDK, network requests are allowed by default. If you want to send data that the App Center SDK collects by the user concern you can disallow automatic sending data.

AppCenter.IsNetworkRequestsAllowed = false;

In this case, the App Center SDK continues to collect data but it will be sent only when the network requests will be allowed.

AppCenter.IsNetworkRequestsAllowed = true;

Note

This value is retained between starts.

At any time, you can check whether sending data in the App Center SDK is allowed or not.

AppCenter.IsNetworkRequestsAllowed;

Check if App Center is enabled

You can also check if App Center is enabled or not.

bool enabled = await AppCenter.IsEnabledAsync();

Check App Center SDK version at runtime

You can get the version of App Center SDK that you're currently using.

AppCenter.SdkVersion;

Storage size

When using the App Center SDK, logs are stored locally on the device. Large logs can take up a lot of space, so you may choose to limit the size of the local database.

You can use the SetMaxStorageSizeAsync API to set the size of the local DB. The API is asynchronous, and the callback is called when you start App Center services. For this reason, SetMaxStorageSizeAsync must be called before your call to AppCenter.Start(...). You may only call the API once.

// Use 20 MB for storage.
AppCenter.SetMaxStorageSizeAsync(20 * 1024 * 1024).ContinueWith((storageTask) => {
    // The storageTask.Result is false when the size cannot be honored.
});
AppCenter.Start("{Your App Secret}", typeof(Analytics));

If you don't set the max storage size, the SDK uses a default max size of 10 MB. The minimum size you're allowed to set is 20 KB.

Note

The actual max storage size may be higher than the value you've chosen. SQLite rounds the size up to the next multiple of the page size. The App Center SDK uses a page size of 4 KB.

Note

The logs older than 25 days will be discarded.

Other APIs

The .NET NuGet package is shared with Xamarin and UWP, which have more functionalities. All the APIs that aren't documented for WPF and WinForms in this page will return null or false and won't do anything on WPF and WinForms. The other APIs are visible so that you can use them in a portable library (such as when using the SDK in a Xamarin.Forms application that contains a UWP project), but those extra APIs aren't implemented on WPF and WinForms.