Google explains the reasons for a large number of Android apps crashing last month

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Last month, we reported a bug in the WebView of the Android system that caused a lot of news about app crashes. At that time, Google quickly released an update to solve the problem in response to this error but did not provide an explanation for the problem.

Now a month later, Google officially released an announcement to disclose more details of this problem and gave a solution to the problem of how to avoid WebView bugs in the future.

Android 11 picture-in-picture

In the report, Google attributed the problem to a bug in the experiment and configuration technology of Chrome and WebView. This problem caused instability in Android applications that combined WebView to display web content, which in turn causes the app to crash frequently on the affected device.

To ensure that such problems do not recur, Google will improve the change management and rollout policies for WebView system components and their dependencies, including:

  • Audit WebView and its related dependencies for production readiness.
  • Implement a WebView ‘Safe Mode’ which will handle this class of configuration error and revert back to
    a known-good state.
  • Improve our experiment testability and roll-out process.
  • Accelerate the update mechanisms for Chrome and WebView via the Play store.
  • Better communicate throughout incidents with our users, and provide commentary with our partners on
    impact and resolution status.
Google has launched an update quickly after the problem occurred. If users encounter this problem, they can use Google Play to automatically or manually update the WebView component to solve the problem.

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