backfeedr Documentation

Self-hosted crash reporting & app metrics for iOS indie developers

What You Get

After setting up backfeedr, you’ll have a complete crash reporting system running on your own infrastructure:

📊 Real-Time Dashboard

Monitor your app’s health with a beautiful web dashboard:

Dashboard Overview Live dashboard showing crash statistics, trends, and recent reports

Features:

Live Metrics - See crash counts, active users, and trends at a glance
Interactive Charts - Visualize crash patterns over time
Time Filtering - Filter by last 24h, 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days
Device Analytics - See which devices are most affected

🔍 Detailed Crash Reports

When a crash happens, you get comprehensive information:

Crash Detail Full stack trace with file names, line numbers, and device context

Each crash report includes:

Complete stack trace with symbolication
Device model and iOS version
App version and build number
Memory and battery status at crash time
Locale and timezone
Grouped by exception type for easy triage

📱 iOS SDK Integration

Simple Swift integration with automatic crash detection:

import BackfeedrKit

// One-time setup
Backfeedr.configure(
    endpoint: "https://crashes.yourserver.com",
    apiKey: "bf_live_your_key"
)

// That's it! Crashes are automatically reported

SDK Features:

✅ Automatic crash detection
✅ Manual error reporting
✅ Event tracking (sessions, custom events)
✅ Offline queue (crashes stored when offline)
✅ PII scrubbing (removes personal data)
✅ Lightweight (< 1MB impact)

Quick Links

Getting Started - Installation & Setup
API Reference - Complete API documentation
Dashboard Guide - Using the web dashboard
iOS SDK - Swift SDK documentation
Deployment - Production deployment
Contributing - How to contribute

Why backfeedr?

Feature	Firebase Crashlytics	Sentry Self-Hosted	backfeedr
Setup	SDK + Google account	10+ services, complex	1 Docker container
Data Ownership	Google owns your data	You own it	You own it
Privacy	Data shared with Google	Your data stays private	Privacy-first, no third parties
Cost	Free (but you’re the product)	OSS but infrastructure costs	Forever free, open source
iOS Native	Generic, not Swift-optimized	Generic	Built for Swift developers
Resource Usage	N/A (cloud)	4GB+ RAM	256MB RAM

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/steviee/backfeedr.git
cd backfeedr

# Start with Docker (recommended)
mkdir data
docker-compose up -d

# Or build from source
make build
./backfeedr

# Visit your dashboard
open http://localhost:8080

Architecture

┌─────────────┐     HTTPS/JSON      ┌─────────────────┐
│   iOS App   │ ────────────────────> │  backfeedr      │
│  (Swift)    │                     │  (Go Server)    │
└─────────────┘                     │                 │
                                    │  • SQLite DB    │
┌─────────────┐     HTTP            │  • HTMX UI      │
│   Browser   │ ──────────────────> │  • REST API     │
│  (Dashboard)│                     └─────────────────┘
└─────────────┘                            │
                                           │
                                    ┌──────┴──────┐
                                    │   Your VPS   │
                                    │  (You own    │
                                    │   the data)  │
                                    └──────────────┘

Project Status

⚠️ Early Development - APIs may change, features are incomplete. Not yet production-ready.

See our Roadmap for planned features.

Support

🐛 Open an Issue
💡 Start a Discussion
📧 Contact: See repository for maintainer contact