Android users have been reporting problems with apps crashing spontaneously over the last few days.
Problems surfaced on Monday afternoon with popular apps like Gmail that would fail to load on Samsung Galaxy and Pixel devices.
‘We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support,’ Google said on its Gmail status dashboard.
‘Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.’
The problem appeared to originate in Android System WebView, a system component that lets Android apps display web content.
Google says it has now issued an updated version of WebView that can be manually installed to resolve the problem.
How to stop apps crashing on your Android phone
Follow these steps to install the update and solve the problem:
- Open the Play Store app on your phone
- Search for ‘Android System Webview’
- Select the ‘Update option
- Repeat the process for Google Chrome
In some cases, people found that simply uninstalling WebView would solve the problem. Thankfully, that’s no longer needed as the latest update should fix the issue.
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