Every so often, you ask to update you about the reported issues: When is the ETA? Have you found anything? When is the new version? And these questions are fair because our dealing with bugs isn’t what we typically share on our social media or blog. So for some of you, it might seem as though we don’t ever return to the reported bug after closing the ticket.

To bust this misconception, we’re sharing this post that describes a typical debugging process within the 4K Download team.

How we understand something’s wrong

The majority of issues we debug are addressed by you (and for that, we thank you!), for not all the bugs are obvious to us, and not every possible scenario can be foreseen before the app release.

You can share an issue you encounter or submit a bug on Reddit or via our support email support@4kdownload.com. After you contact us, our user care team typically asks you to send out some additional details, such as links, screenshots, your OS, the app versions, log files, and other stuff. We do that in order to dive deeper into the issue and provide you with the most actionable solution pronto. For us, every detail matters.

Then we recreate the issue you described within our team and see if it persists. We advise performing several steps, and if they don’t work, we ask for the log files. Sometimes they make it clear that an issue can be corrected on your own without our additional support or fix (for example, the wrong output folder path).

But there are also situations that clearly showcase we’ve faced an annoying bug. In this case, the files are redirected to the developers.

How devs deal with the bug

Now comes the stage you don't see. The 4K Download support team creates a ticket for the development team. The devs then start rechecking the issue. When doing so, they examine the log file, find the bug, and here’s where the magic happens. There are cases when the developers need some additional details, so the support team might contact you again to get them.

During this stage, it’s impossible to predict how long it may last, as sometimes the solution is simple, while some cases require a deep analysis, tests, and even assistance from you. When the developers manage to solve the bug, they build a new version.

Bug is found & dealt with. Is this all?

You might think that when the devs fix the issue, the new version is ready to be rolled out. Not exactly. Here’s where the QA team steps in to test if the bug has been actually fixed and won’t annoy you anymore. The quality assurance step is crucial, as our QA engineers test not only whether this particular bug doesn’t show up anymore but if the new release hasn’t affected the features that have been released in the previous versions.

Sometimes, we even send the builds to you so that you can reproduce other scenarios. When you give us essential feedback, we forward it to the QA engineers or developers. This stage also might take time, as new issues may appear. Only after the build is tested thoroughly and no critical bugs are detected we release it.

There are also situations when we have to postpone the fix for a particular bug and release a new version with other changes. This is usually done due to the priorities we have at the moment. Do we need to improve the download speed first or support a new website? What is better — to fix the crashes or change the design of a button?

Some improvements take a longer time to implement. That’s why there may be several updates before a particular feature or bug fix is finally out. After analysing the situation, the users’ feedback, and technical limitations, the team decides on the order of the fixes to be implemented and released.

Right after the release, this first couple of days is also critical, as the support team collects your feedback: Is everything fine with the UI and UX? Does the app work properly? Are there any other bugs we haven’t noticed previously? Are there any suggestions?

Only after that, we can sigh with relief: The new version works and the bugs are fixed :)

As you can see, this process isn’t always easy, fast, and obvious. However, we assure you that we always try to react quickly and solve the issues as soon as possible! And not without your help.