Masking for Mobile Apps

Article
07/01/2024

Choose what Clarity can track on your app by masking or unmasking it. Masking is essential when your app might capture users' data that you don't want Clarity to store. The masking ensures that it's never uploaded to Clarity.

Clarity masks sensitive content on your app by default. Clarity doesn't capture this masked content.

Important

Content in the input boxes is masked in all modes and can't be customized.
Masking changes might take up to an hour to appear. They can't be retroactively applied.

How to mask and unmask content?

Note

Only a project's admin can mask and unmask content. Members who are not admins can't edit the masking mode, add, or delete masked elements.

You can set Masking for Clarity in two ways:

Masking modes: Masking modes are applied to your entire app (native and webviews).
Masking by elements: You can choose to mask certain elements by IDs, by Class, or for entire Screens/Activities.

Masking modes

You can easily select one of the three masking modes. By default, the masking mode is set to Balanced.

Go to Settings > Masking.
Under Masking mode, select a masking mode.
- Strict: All text and images are masked. You can exclude some screens by adding them to unmasked elements.
- Balanced: Only sensitive text is masked. We classify all input box content, numbers, and email addresses as sensitive text unless you add a screen to the list of masked activities.
  To mask a certain view instance in an unmasked screen, use the maskView API for Android and iOS.
- Relaxed: only text fields or inputs are masked. Screen elements that might contain personal data aren't masked by default and require explicit masking.
Upon selecting a masking mode, you can view a message as 'Masking mode set' on top of the screen.

Mask by element

You can also select specific elements to override the overall masking mode of your app.

Native elements

Important

If you would like to mask certain screens or classes (types), ensure to exclude these elements from obfuscation in your obfuscation tool configuration, such as ProGuard.

The native elements rules get applied to the views of native Android, iOS, and React Native applications.

Tip

If you still need to obfuscate your code, you can (un)mask using the Clarity tag approach (Android only).

You can use a CSS-selectors-like syntax to mask/unmask native elements:

.class_name for a class or a Clarity tag.
#id_value for an ID.
&screen for a screen/activity.
*fragment for a fragment (Android) or view controller (iOS).

The table specifies the masking rules that can be applied to each framework.

Platform	Masking by ID `#id`	Masking by Class/Tag `.class_name`	Masking by Screen `&screen`	Masking by Fragment `*fragment`
Native Android	✓	✓	✓	✓
Native iOS	✓ Note: Use the `accessibilityIdentifier` view property to set the IDs for masking.	✓	✓	✓
React Native	✓ Note: Use the `testID` view property to set the IDs for masking.	✗	✗	✗

Examples

Android

To mask/unmask all the TextView instances, add .TextView. to the native elements list and, mark it as mask/unmask.Make sure that the TextView class isn't obfuscated; otherwise, the rule has no effect.
To mask/unmask a view using the Clarity tag, you can specify the tag by assigning it to the view as: view.setTag(R.id.clarity_tag, "clarity_mask") and add .clarity_mask rule to the native elements list and mark it as mask/unmask.
To mask/unmask a view with ID clarityView, add #clarityView to the native elements list and mark it as mask/unmask.
To mask/unmask an activity called MainActivity, add &MainActivity to the native elements list, and mark it as mask/unmask. Make sure that the MainActivity class isn't obfuscated; otherwise, the rule has no effect.
To mask/unmask a fragment called ClarityFragment, add *ClarityFragment to the native elements list, and mark it as mask/unmask. Make sure that the ClarityFragment class isn't obfuscated; otherwise, the rule has no effect.

iOS

To mask/unmask all the UILabel instances, add .UILabel. to the native elements list and, mark it as mask/unmask.Make sure that the UILabel class isn't obfuscated; otherwise, the rule has no effect.
To mask/unmask a view, specify its accessibilityIdentifier: view.accessibilityIdentifier = "maskedText", and add #maskedText to the native elements list and mark it as mask/unmask.
To mask/unmask a screen called HomeVC, add &HomeVC to the native elements list, and mark it as mask/unmask. Make sure that HomeVC is the title of the top-level presented view controller; otherwise, the rule has no effect.
To mask/unmask a view controller title called SettingsVC, add *SettingsVC to the native elements list, and mark it as mask/unmask. Make sure that the SettingsVC class isn't obfuscated; otherwise, the rule has no effect.

React Native

To mask/unmask an element, specify its testID: <Text testID="maskedText">Masked text</Text>, and add #maskedText to the native elements list and mark it as mask/unmask.

WebView elements

You can use standard CSS selectors to apply masking rules. The masking rules apply to web elements inside the Cordova/Ionic web views.

These rules are also applied to web views in native and React Native applications.

In order to add masking by element rules, follow these steps:

Go to Settings > Masking.
Under Mask by element, select Add element.
Enter the selector for the element to be masked and select Confirm.
As you add the elements, switch between masking and unmasking.
You can delete an element by selecting the Delete icon and confirm Yes, delete on pop-up window.