Visits
When a visit starts, what counts as leaving the app, and how to change it.
A visit is one time someone uses your app, from opening it to putting it down. Each visit is replayed in the person’s Journey, and visits are what the dashboard counts when it shows visits, screens per visit and where people leave. The SDK starts visits for you; there’s nothing to set up.
When a new visit starts
| What happened | Result |
|---|---|
| App launched | New visit. The app wasn’t running, for example after it was closed or the phone restarted. |
| Away more than 2 minutes | New visit. They were on the home screen, in another app, or had the phone locked. The visit begins on the screen they come back to. |
| Away 2 minutes or less | Same visit, for example after copying a code from Messages or a quick reply. The Journey shows Left the app · back after 1m 30s. |
| Someone else signs in, or sign-out | New visit, as a new person, when identify is called with a different user ID or reset is called. Shown as user changed. |
What doesn’t count as leaving
- System pop-ups on iPhone. A permission prompt, the Google or Apple sign-in sheet, the App Store purchase sheet or Control Center cover your app for a moment, but it never goes to the background. These aren’t shown as leaving and don’t end a visit.
- Starting in the background. When the system wakes your app for a background fetch or a silent push, no visit starts. It starts once someone actually opens the app.
- Short trips on Android. Some Android system screens, like the Google Play purchase sheet, briefly send your app to the background. They’re almost always shorter than 2 minutes, so the visit continues.
Changing the 2 minutes
If people often leave your app in the middle of a task and come back, for example to approve a payment in their bank app, allow longer. If you’d rather see every return as its own visit, allow less. Pass the time in milliseconds:
<RiveoraProvider
projectKey="pk_your_project_key"
backgroundTimeoutMs={5 * 60 * 1000} // 5 minutes
>
<App />
</RiveoraProvider>What this means for your numbers
- Visits count how often people open your app, not how many people use it. Someone who opens your app three times in an evening has three visits.
- Where people leave counts the last screen of each visit, so it shows where people put your app down.
- Sales aren’t split by visits. Purchases, “What makes people buy” and paywall results are counted per person, so a purchase made in a later visit still counts.
SDK 0.1 kept everything within 30 minutes in one visit, even when the app was closed and opened again. From 0.2, each time someone opens your app is its own visit. After you update, visit counts go up and “per visit” averages (screens, taps) go down. People aren’t using your app more; their visits are counted separately. Totals don’t change, and visits recorded before the update stay as they were.