Unreal Engine 5 Documentation has been moved to the Epic Developer Community

When your game crashes, Unreal Engine creates a crash report, which it can send to the Crash Report Client . The Crash Report Client is an application that prompts users to provide optional comments and submit the crash report to Epic Games. You can customize the Crash Report Client packaged with your game to send crash report data to your own server to help with debugging your games.

This guide provides:

• An overview of crash reports and their contents.

• Information on where to find crash reports on your local machine.

• Config variable reference and project settings for crash reporting.

• How to modify and configure the crash reporter client for your own packaged applications.

• Recommendations for crash report services you can use to receive crash reports on a remote server.

Crash Reports

A crash report contains:

• A unique random crash identifier, called crash guid .

• Information about the error, such as the type (crash, assert, ensure, etc.), or the callstacks of the crashing thread and all other threads.

• System information for the machine and application context information such as build configuration.

• The log output at the moment of the crash. This can be device runtime logs or project editor logs.

• Additional context provided by the game using key/value pairs.

• Any additional comments provided by the user through the crash report client.

The following is an example of a crash report as viewed in the Crash Report Client:

Where To Find Local Crash Reports

Crash reports from the editor are stored on your local machine in your project's Saved/Crashes folder.

Alternatively, you can find crash reports on a user's local machine in C:\Users[Your Windows Username]\AppData\Local[Project Name]\Saved\Crashes .

Common Causes of Crashes in Unreal Engine

The following are the most common causes of crash reports that you will encounter. Each of these starts the Crash Reporter client with a message above the callstack giving details about the type of crash encountered.

Add Custom Context to Crash Reports

In addition to the standard information added to a crash report, it is also possible for game projects to add their own custom context, called game data . This could be information about the game mode, the player's location in the world, or other game state information vital for investigating bugs. The data is added using key/value pairs and using the FPlatformCrashContext::SetGameData function.

    /** Updates (or adds if not already present) arbitrary game data to the crash context (will remove the key if passed an empty string) */
    CORE_API static void SetGameData(const FString& Key, const FString& Value);

Note that custom context is set before the error occurs. When a crash report is collected, the current state of the game data values is captured and written to the report.

As an example, whenever your game enters a new game mode call:

    void OnEnterMyGameMode()
    {
        FPlatformCrashContext::SetGameData(TEXT("GameMode"), TEXT("MyGameModeName"));
    }

    void OnExitMyGameMode()
    {
        FPlatformCrashContext::SetGameData(TEXT("GameMode"), FString());
    }

A crash during that game mode will contain the following XMLdata:

    <GameData>
        <GameMode>MyGameModeName</GameMode>
    </GameData>

Crash Reporter Infrastructure

The crash report infrastructure for UE consists of the following components:

1. A Crash Report Client on the user's machine, distributed with builds of the editor or your game. The Crash Report Client sends crash dump info to your endpoint.

2. A server with applications and components that manage, filter, and store crash reports.

The sections below detail each of these components and how to set them up for your own organization.

Crash Reporter Client

The Crash Reporter Client is a separate program that is used with both editor builds and optionally packaged with runtime builds on users' machines. When either the editor or the packaged application crashes, the engine generates a crash report, then launches the Crash Reporter Client if available. If the Crash Reporter is not in unattended mode, it displays a window with the crash data and prompts users to send or opt out of sending the report.

Package the Crash Reporter Client With Your Game

By default, the Crash Reporter Client is not included with packaged games. To add it to your packaged builds:

1. In Unreal Editor, open Project Settings and navigate to Project > Packaging .

2. Unfold the Advanced dropdown.

3. Enable the Include Crash Reporter setting.

Alternatively, you can add IncludeCrashReporter=True to your project's Config/DefaultGame.ini file.

    [/Script/UnrealEd.ProjectPackagingSettings]
    IncludeCrashReporter=True

Configure Automatic Crash Reports

The following config variables decide whether or not the crash reporter should automatically send crash reports to the server. You can configure these in any Engine.ini file under the [CrashReportClient] category.

    [CrashReportClient]
    bAgreeToCrashUpload=false
    bSendUnattendedBugReports=false

Configure the Crash Reporter Client

You can customize the Crash Reporter Client to send crash events to a server of your choice. To customize the Crash Reporter:

1. Open your Unreal Engine install directory.

2. Navigate to Engine/Programs/CrashReportClient/Config

3. Open the DefaultEngine.ini file.

This config file includes all variables used for configuring the Crash Reporter.

    [CrashReportClient]
    DataRouterUrl="https://datarouter.ol.epicgames.com/datarouter/api/v1/public/data"
    bAllowToBeContacted=true
    bSendLogFile=true
    CanSendWhenUIFailedToInitialize=true
    UIInitRetryCount=10
    UIInitRetryInterval=2.0

Change the URL to Send Crash Reports To

To send crash reports to your own organization, change the DataRouterURL variable to the URL of your own crash report server. Refer to the Crash Report Server section below for more information about how to set up this endpoint.

Config Variable Reference

The Crash Reporter Client's config variables are as follows:

Editor builds always include the Crash Report Client, but including it in packaged builds is optional.

Crash Report Server

To make the most of the crash reporter, you need to set up a server that can receive remote users' crash reports and symbolicate them. UE does not include such a component with its source code or binaries. However, using the source code for the Crash Report Client can give you a starting point to create your own custom solution. There are also several third-party crash report services that you can deploy.

The following crash report services are commonly used within the UE community. Each one has documentation for integrating them with UE's crash reporter: