A debug build works. The release build installs. Then one screen crashes only after minification is enabled. The tempting fix is immediate: -keep class com.example.** { *; } Or worse, turn R8 off and ship. Both can make the symptom disappear. Neither tells you what broke. A release-only R8 failure is usually easier to solve when you treat it as an indirect-reference debugging problem , not a ProGuard guessing contest. The goal is to identify the runtime contract that ...