BetterBugs Web SDK

Simplify bug reporting within your web apps with the BetterBugs Web SDK.

The BetterBugs Web SDK allows you to include bug reporting capabilities in your application with minimal settings and effort.

Now, you can enhance your apps with user-friendly and easy-to-implement issue reporting capabilities, such as media capturing, log tracking, getting the two-minute Rewind session video, and real-time hooks to help you and your team report, diagnose, and fix issues effectively.

Breaking it down

Using the BetterBugs Web SDK, you can enhance your web apps with bug reporting features that allow you to capture useful data about the issues. Here's more on it.

Key features of the SDK

• Seamless integration — Quick installation and easy to use with a few lines of code.
• Configurable params — Tweak settings for the parameters, such as metaData, recordType, enableAnnotation, and many others.
• Use Methods — Control the SDK with programmatic methods, such as show(), hide(), startRecording(), and many others.
• Event hooks — For deeper integration, listen for specific lifecycle events with hooks, such as after a screenshot is captured (screenshot), a bug is submitted (bugSubmit), or a recording starts (recordingStop), and many others.
• Session Rewind (coming soon) – Automatically records the last 2 minutes of a session to capture all user interactions. It's perfect for auto-capturing issues that just happened and helps trace actions that lead to the bug.
• Floating widget customization – Control the widget's look and placement.

Quick installation

To install the SDK, use the following command:

NPM install

npm install @betterbugs/web-sdk

Yarn install

yarn add @betterbugs/web-sdk

BetterBugs Web SDK initialization: Usage example

After installation, here's how to initialize the SDK instance in your web app:

TypeScript

import { Betterbugs } from '@betterbugs/web-sdk';

new Betterbugs({
  apiKey: process.env.TEST_API_KEY || '',
  mode: 'production',
});

Overview of the example code

Here's what it does:

1 - Imports the Betterbugs SDK — Pulls in Betterbugs from the @betterbugs/web-sdk package.

2 - Creates a new instance — The configuration object sets options for:

• apiKey: Get value from environment variable (process.env.PROJECT_API_KEY).
• mode: Running in production environment for additional debugging features.

Configurable Options: Customize SDK behavior

You can customize the SDK behavior with the following parameters:

Screenshot accuracy

Screenshots are captured with one of two engines, chosen automatically by what the browser supports.

Native capture (default, all desktop browsers). The SDK asks the browser for the actual rendered pixels via getDisplayMedia. The result matches what the user saw, including cross-origin iframes, <video>, WebGL and canvas content, and modern CSS such as backdrop-filter and blend modes. Region ("Crop") captures are cropped from the same frame, so both modes look identical.

The cost is one browser permission prompt per capture. What the user sees in that prompt depends on the engine:

On Safari and Firefox the SDK falls back to DOM rendering automatically if it cannot locate the viewport in the shared frame reliably, or if the frame comes back at a lower resolution than a DOM render would produce — a sharp approximation beats a blurry photograph of the real thing.

If the user dismisses the prompt entirely, no screenshot is taken. Declining is treated as "don't capture me", not as a request for a lower-fidelity capture.

DOM rendering (fallback). Used on mobile browsers, when preferNativeCapture: false, and whenever native capture is unavailable or declined per the rules above. The page is re-rendered from the DOM by html2canvas-pro, which reimplements CSS layout in JavaScript and therefore will be inaccurate on some sites. Known limitations:

When the SDK falls back to DOM rendering and detects any of the first three in the captured area, it shows the reporter a warning at capture time so an inaccurate screenshot is not submitted unnoticed.

Set preferNativeCapture: false to always use DOM rendering and never show a permission prompt — appropriate if the prompt is disruptive in your product and your pages do not contain the content listed above.

Recording modes

recordType controls how screen recordings are captured.

• recordVideo — real video via the browser's MediaRecorder. Highest fidelity: it records exactly what was on screen, with audio.
• domRecord — records DOM mutations and replays them. No video file, works on every device including mobile, and stays accurate through page navigations.

Leaving recordType unset (recommended)

The SDK detects what the visitor's browser can actually deliver and picks the optimal mode for it — real video wherever the browser supports screen capture, DOM recording everywhere else. Recording formats differ between browser engines; the SDK handles that internally, so playback and upload work the same either way and there is nothing for you to configure.

Setting recordType explicitly

Your choice is honoured as given, with no capability substitution — useful when you want one consistent recording format across all your users. If the browser cannot support what you asked for, the SDK logs a console warning rather than silently overriding you.

The one exception is Electron, which does not support DOM recording: domRecord there is overridden to recordVideo with a warning.

Programmatic Methods: Control SDK behavior

Available methods for controlling the BetterBugs SDK behavior;

Lifecycle Event Hooks: For deeper integrations

Available hooks to listen to the lifecycle events:

Floating widget customization options

The floating widget can be customized in various ways:

• Positioning — Define widget position using { top, left, right, bottom }.
• UI Customization — Modify button styles, background, and primary colors.