How to Fix a Bad App Update Without Re-Publishing

When Updates Go Wrong

It's the scenario every developer dreads. You push an update on Friday afternoon. By Friday evening, your monitoring tools are screaming. The app is crashing on launch for 20% of your users.

In the old world, you were trapped. You'd have to identify the bug, fix it, rebuild, resubmit to Apple/Google, and wait days for approval. Meanwhile, your App Store rating tanks.

In the Upflux world, you just hit "Undo".

The OTA Solution: Instant Rollback

Upflux maintains a history of every release you make. Because the updates are essentially JavaScript bundles, "rolling back" is as simple as telling the app to load the previous bundle.

# The magic command
upflux rollback --deployment production

That's it. Within minutes, as users open their apps, they are silently moved back to the last stable version. No app store submission required.

Step-by-Step Recovery Guide

Step 1: Identify the Problem

Monitoring is key. Use tools like Sentry, Bugsnag, or Firebase Crashlytics. If you see a spike in errors correlating with your new release label (e.g., v1.0.2), you have a problem.

Step 2: Stop the Bleeding (Rollback)

Don't try to "fix forward" if the issue is critical. Roll back immediately to stop the crashes.

upflux rollback --deployment production --target-release v1.0.1

Step 3: Reproduce and Fix

Now that production is safe, you can take your time.

1. Pull the bad commit locally.
2. Reproduce the crash.
3. Implement the fix.

Step 4: The Recovery Release

Once fixed, deploy the new version. We recommend a staged rollout for this recovery release to be extra safe.

upflux release --label v1.0.3-hotfix --rollout 10

Post-Mortem Template

After the dust settles, write a post-mortem.

• Impact: How many users were affected?
• Root Cause: What line of code caused it? Why did tests miss it?
• Recovery Time: How long from detection to rollback? (With Upflux, this should be < 5 minutes).
• Action Items: Improve test coverage, add more staging QA steps.

Prevention is Better Than Cure

1. Use Staged Rollouts: Never go to 100% immediately.
2. Test on Staging: Always deploy to a device pointing to the Staging environment first.
3. Use Upflux: Sign up for free to get the undo button for your mobile app.