Different Google Analytics Tracking Code for multiple mobile platform?

Question

Google Analytics have App usage tracking. I have an app for both iOS and Android platform, do I require 2 sets of tracking code? From GA's answer:

Track different platforms of an app in the same property.

If you’ve developed the same app for different platforms (i.e., MyApp for Android and MyApp for iOS), track them in the same property. You can then set up new views to organize and compare the performances in your Google Analytics reports. If your iOS and Android apps differ greatly in performance or usage, you might want to track each platform in separate properties.

If the same tracking code is used, how can Google Analytics differentiate the data from iOS and Android ? How to set up "new views" ?

Answer 1

You have several solutions:

1. One property for both OS, one view with segmented data
2. Two properties for each OS.

However it depends on you want to report the data, whether you have standard or premium GA which is important for data sampling as the standard have limitations and samples the viewed data as for premium it doesn't.

Google recommends to have different properties https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2587087?hl=en

its your call at the end.

Hope it helps

Answer 2

I think google changed the best practices from the time you asked the question. As of today, google suggests to use different tracking code for different platforms of the same app. See here

This is what the link says:

Track different platforms of an app in different properties. If you’ve developed the same app for different platforms (i.e., MyApp for Android and MyApp for iOS), track them in different properties. If you want to see the data together, creating an account with AdMob allows you to get a view of all of your data in one place with a rollup property. You can then set up new views to organize and compare the performances in your Google Analytics reports.

Answer 3

I hope you found the answer yourself by now, but I just went through this and thought I might leave a note for the next person who comes along.

Google Analytics has built-in segments which break down the data into various groupings in Reporting view. For mobile apps, "Android Traffic" and "iOS Traffic' are two of the built-in segments.

You can pick and choose which segments are shown in reporting view by clicking the segment selection button (unlabeled) near the top of the screen, then clicking on which segments you want to enable (see image below).