Wire Android ships six build flavors, each with a distinct icon background color for easy visual identification. The flavor controls the default backend, logging behavior, feature flags, and application ID.
For full configuration details, see default.json in the repository root.
Flavor overview
| Flavor | Icon color | Application ID | Default backend | Logging | Analytics |
|---|
| Dev | Red | com.waz.zclient.dev | Wire Staging (anta) | Enabled | Disabled |
| Staging | Orange | com.waz.zclient.dev | Wire Staging | Enabled | Enabled |
| Internal | Green | com.wire.internal | Wire Production | Enabled | Enabled |
| Beta | Blue | com.wire.android.internal | Wire Production | Enabled | Enabled |
| Prod | White | com.wire | Wire Production | Disabled | Enabled |
| F-Droid | White | com.wire | Wire Production | Disabled | Disabled |
Flavor details
Dev
Staging
Internal
Beta
Prod
F-Droid
Intended use: Active feature development. Bleeding edge and unstable.
- Connects to the Wire Staging backend (
https://nginz-https.anta.wire.link)
- Developer features and development API enabled
- SSL certificate validation can be ignored
- Logging uploaded to a third-party service for developer analysis
- Analytics disabled
{
"application_id": "com.waz.zclient.dev",
"developer_features_enabled": true,
"logging_enabled": true,
"development_api_enabled": true,
"ignore_ssl_certificates": true,
"analytics_enabled": false,
"default_backend_url_base_api": "https://nginz-https.anta.wire.link"
}
Intended use: QA testing. Imitates the production app experience with a staging backend.
- Connects to the Wire Staging backend (
https://staging-nginz-https.zinfra.io)
- Developer features enabled, but development API is disabled
- Feature flags mirror the Prod flavor for accurate release testing
- Logging uploaded to a third-party service
- Analytics enabled
{
"application_id": "com.waz.zclient.dev",
"developer_features_enabled": true,
"logging_enabled": true,
"development_api_enabled": false,
"analytics_enabled": true,
"default_backend_url_base_api": "https://staging-nginz-https.zinfra.io"
}
Intended use: Currently unused. Retained from earlier development; likely to be removed.
- Connects to Wire Production backend
- Logging uploaded to a third-party service
- Analytics enabled
{
"application_id": "com.wire.internal",
"developer_features_enabled": true,
"logging_enabled": true,
"development_api_enabled": false,
"analytics_enabled": true
}
Intended use: Internal dogfood testing by Wire employees before features reach the general public.
- Connects to Wire Production backend
- Logging uploaded to a third-party service
- Analytics enabled
- May include features not yet available in Prod
{
"application_id": "com.wire.android.internal",
"developer_features_enabled": true,
"logging_enabled": true,
"development_api_enabled": false,
"analytics_enabled": true
}
Intended use: The public production release distributed on the Google Play Store.
- Connects to Wire Production backend (
https://prod-nginz-https.wire.com)
- Logging disabled by default; users can enable it manually within the app, but logs are never uploaded
- Analytics enabled
- No developer features or development API
{
"application_id": "com.wire",
"developer_features_enabled": false,
"logging_enabled": false,
"development_api_enabled": false,
"analytics_enabled": true,
"default_backend_url_base_api": "https://prod-nginz-https.wire.com"
}
Intended use: Public production release distributed on F-Droid, without any closed-source dependencies.
- Same application ID and backend as Prod (
com.wire)
- No Google Mobile Services (GMS) — FCM push is excluded
- Analytics completely disabled (no keys configured)
- Logging disabled
{
"application_id": "com.wire",
"developer_features_enabled": false,
"logging_enabled": false,
"analytics_enabled": false,
"analytics_app_key": "",
"analytics_server_url": ""
}
The F-Droid build excludes the Google GMS Gradle plugin entirely. This is detected automatically at build time via the FLAVOR environment variable or the Gradle task name.
Logging behavior
Logs from Dev, Staging, Internal, and Beta builds are automatically uploaded to a third-party service (Datadog) for developer analysis. Do not use these builds with personal or sensitive accounts.
Prod and F-Droid builds never upload logs. Users can enable local logging within the app settings and export log files manually, but logs remain on-device only.
Build types
Each flavor can be combined with a build type:
| Build type | Description |
|---|
debug | Not minified. Includes extra debugging tools. Slower at runtime. Can be profiled. |
release | Minified and optimized. Suitable for distribution. |
<flavor><BuildType>. For example:
# Assemble a staging debug build
./gradlew assembleStagingDebug
# Assemble a production release build
./gradlew assembleProdRelease
# Assemble an F-Droid release build
./gradlew assembleFdroidRelease
Source sets
Flavor-specific resources and code live under app/src/<flavor>/. The following source sets are present in the repository:
app/src/
├── main/ # Shared code and resources
├── debug/ # Debug build type overrides
├── dev/ # Dev flavor resources
├── staging/ # Staging flavor resources
├── internal/ # Internal flavor resources
├── prod/ # Prod flavor resources
├── fdroid/ # F-Droid flavor resources (no GMS)
├── nonfree/ # Shared resources for non-F-Droid flavors
├── foss/ # Shared resources for FOSS (F-Droid) flavor
├── public/ # Shared resources for public-facing flavors
└── private/ # Shared resources for internal-only flavors
