When Android apps started crashing for no reason, the “culprit” was eventually discovered. The Android System WebView app update apparently affected apps on a lot of people’s devices causing them to keep on crashing and users had to keep restarting said apps and maybe even their phones. Fortunately, there’s a quick fix for that even as Google has not released a fix for it. All you have to do is to uninstall the updates for WebView and things should be back to normal.
If you’re wondering why you would have the System WebView app when you didn’t install it in the first place, it’s actually pre-installed in all Android devices. It’s a system component that lets apps display webpages without having to build their own browser engine. It’s one of those invisible components working behind the scenes and is updated automatically through the Google Play Store. And so the newest update automatically caused the crashing.
The past day or so saw users complaining about random apps crashing on their device and it was eventually traced to the WebView update. The good thing with the fact that it’s updated through the Google Play Store is that the temporary fix is easy. Just uninstall the updates for WebView. No need to roll back your firmware or wait for a new update from Google. It will restore your WebView to practically its factory version but at least no other apps will crash.
All you have to do is go to Google Play Store or to the list of Apps in your phone’s settings. Tap on the three buttons on the right side and tap “Uninstall updates”. It will not uninstall the app (and you probably shouldn’t uninstall it) but it will uninstall the updates on top of it. It seems to have worked for a lot of users so it should be quick but not 100% sure fix. Some who have also updated WebView after that are not having any problems anymore.
We don’t know yet if Google will be releasing a patch to fix whatever is broken with the WebView app or if we’ll just have to wait for the next update for that. The best thing to do now if you’re experiencing crashing apps is to just follow this quick fix.