How to crash an Android app programmatically?

you can crash with a simple null point exception.

 throw new NullPointerException();

in addition to @vinnet-shukla answer:

"OR simply throw an uncaught exception"

throwing uncaught exception to do a crash is bad idea as the exception could by caught somwhere higher in the stack - especially when whe don't know where we are right now :)

more ellegant way is to use ERROR

An Error is a subclass of Throwable that indicates serious problems that a reasonable application should not try to catch. Most such errors are abnormal conditions. The ThreadDeath error, though a "normal" condition, is also a subclass of Error because most applications should not try to catch it.

so we could make our own Error subclass and use it:

/*
 * usage:
 * 
 *   CrashError.doCrash(); 
 *
 */
public class CrashError extends Error {

    public CrashError() { 
        this("simulated crash");
    }

    public CrashError(String msg) {
        super(msg);
    }

    public static void doCrash() {
        throw new CrashError();
    }

}

but if we talk about other possibilities we could also a throw checked exception :)

this will also be a lesson how we could RETHROW CHECKED EXCEPTION :) with other way than use of sun.misc.Unsafe especially when the class is not available in VM implementation

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static <E extends Throwable> void throwAnyT(Throwable e) throws E {
    throw (E) e;
}

public static void throwUnchecked(Throwable e) {
    throwAny(e);
    // should never get there.
    throw new InternalError();
}

public static void crash() {
    throwUnchecked(new java.io.IOException("simulated crash"));
}

in addition to @audric answer:

"You can't throw null"

yes you can :) it's exactly what you are doing in your example and yes it could get undetectable if the catch block will not use Throwable - the NPX will never be thrown and simply there will be normal flow when code will still execute and yes i'll have seen this and experienced by myself :) on ANDROID DALVIK

and what about..? maybe it could fulfill your needs?

java specific (also in android):

- Runtime.getRuntime().exit(int);
- System.exit(int);
- Runtime.getRuntime().halt(int);

android specific:

- android.os.Process.killProcess(int);
- android.os.Process.killProcessQuiet(int);
- android.os.Process.sendSignal(int,int);
- android.system.Os.kill(int);

For kotlin:

val test = ("0")
println(test[1])

Force crash after some delay like this,

new android.os.Handler().postDelayed(
              new Runnable() {
                  public void run() {
                      Log.i("tag", "This'll run 10 seconds later");
                      throw new RuntimeException("This is a crash");
                  }
              },
              10000);

Ref-1 & Ref-2

If you are using firebase crashlytics, then there is a very easy way to do this. Mentioned in their document also.

val crashlytics = FirebaseCrashlytics.getInstance()
crashlytics.log("my message")

You can crash the application simply with this line of code.

throw new RuntimeException("Test Crash"); // Force a crash

You can pass the message, in this case "Test Crash", which can be useful later to refer.

One step ahead, Make sure none of your application's class files implement UncaughtExceptionHandler interface as below,

public class MyApplication extends Application implements Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler{

Otherwise the above exception or any exception for that matter, would be caught/consumed by that class, resulting in not crashing the app. However, you can get hold of that exception in uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) method as below and take the required action. In your case, you'd be reporting it to the Acra using their supported SDK methods.

@Override
public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
    Log.e("MyApplication", "Error", e);
}

You can use activity manager to crash the app with no code changes

adb shell am crash <packagename>