# Span type clarification

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/span-type-clarification/382574>\
**Category:** Elastic Observability\
**Created:** [October 10, 2025, 7:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/span-type-clarification/382574 "2025-10-10T07:03:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![atennapel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/atennapel/32/145318_2.png) [@atennapel](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/atennapel)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 7:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/span-type-clarification/382574/1 "2025-10-10T07:03:56Z")

</div>

Hello,

I’ve been testing Elastic APM with OpenTelemetry and I’ve noticed that some of my spans are showing up as having type “unknown”.

I tried to set the “span.type” to “app”, but it seems that I cannot set this span attribute. I read in some other threads that the “span.type” is handled automatically based on the existance of other attributes (e.g. “db.” attributes). Is this true?

My span is a custom span for business logic so it would be nice to have the type be “app” or “application”. Is there a way to have the span show up as that type? Is there some attribute I can add to my span to have this work?

Greetings,

Albert

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![smith](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/smith/32/53043_2.png) [@smith](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/smith)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/span-type-clarification/382574/2 "2025-10-10T17:09:14Z")

</div>

> I tried to set the “span.type” to “app”, but it seems that I cannot set this span attribute.

What problems are you having setting the attribute?

I tried it with the JS SDK and I’m seeing it in APM:

```auto
tracer.startActiveSpan("count to a million", (span) => {

```

span.setAttribute("span.type", "app");  
```