Navigation Breadcrumbs

Mite records the screens a user visited and attaches that trail to every bug report, so "the app crashed" arrives with the path that led there.

The trail is a ring buffer of the last 20 screens by default, kept in memory and sent as the top-level navigation_trail field on the report.

Breadcrumbs are enabled by default. Expo Router and React Navigation are both supported through one hook, and neither library is required to use the SDK.

Expo Router

Add one line to your root layout:

import { useNavigationContainerRef } from 'expo-router'
import { useMiteNavigationTracking } from '@usemite/sdk'

export default function RootLayout() {
  useMiteNavigationTracking(useNavigationContainerRef())
  // ...
}

React Navigation

Pass the container ref you already use:

import {
  NavigationContainer,
  useNavigationContainerRef,
} from '@react-navigation/native'
import { useMiteNavigationTracking } from '@usemite/sdk'

function App() {
  const navigationRef = useNavigationContainerRef()
  useMiteNavigationTracking(navigationRef)

  return <NavigationContainer ref={navigationRef}>{/* ... */}</NavigationContainer>
}

The hook only needs a ref with isReady, getCurrentRoute, and addListener — that structural shape is why neither navigation library is a hard dependency. If it receives something else it logs a [Mite] warning and disables breadcrumbs rather than throwing.

Custom navigation

Record screens yourself:

import {
  recordNavigationBreadcrumb,
  getNavigationTrail,
  clearNavigationTrail,
} from '@usemite/sdk'

recordNavigationBreadcrumb('Settings')

getNavigationTrail() // [{ screen: 'Home', timestamp: 1730000000000 }, ...]

clearNavigationTrail() // e.g. on logout

getNavigationTrail() returns a copy, oldest screen first — mutating it does not affect the buffer.

What gets recorded

interface NavigationBreadcrumb {
  screen: string
  timestamp: number
}

The tracker deliberately skips some entries:

• Consecutive duplicates. Re-entering the screen you are already on does not add a breadcrumb, so a re-render storm cannot flood the buffer.
• Empty or non-string names. Whitespace-only names are ignored.

When the buffer is full the oldest breadcrumb is dropped.

Configuration

const mite = new Mite({
  apiKey: process.env.EXPO_PUBLIC_MITE_API_KEY,
  enableNavigationBreadcrumbs: true,
  maxNavigationBreadcrumbs: 20,
})

Setting enableNavigationBreadcrumbs: false clears the existing trail immediately and stops recording. Lowering maxNavigationBreadcrumbs truncates the buffer to the most recent entries.

On the bug report

The trail is sent as a top-level navigation_trail field:

{
  "title": "Checkout fails",
  "description": "Tapping Pay does nothing",
  "navigation_trail": [
    { "screen": "Home", "timestamp": 1730000000000 },
    { "screen": "Cart", "timestamp": 1730000012000 },
    { "screen": "Checkout", "timestamp": 1730000020000 }
  ]
}

An empty trail is omitted entirely. Passing navigation_trail explicitly on submitBug overrides the recorded trail for that report.