Chrome 79 patched after Android WebView app chaos

Google has rushed out a fix for a bug in the Android version of Chrome that left some app users unable to access accounts or retrieve stored data.

The problem happened when users upgraded from version 78 to 79 last week, after which apps using a stripped-down browser component called WebView started throwing up issues.

For affected apps, this quickly turned into a big problem, with the Chromium bugs forum filling up with comments from numerous disgruntled developers.

Here’s a flavour. On December 13, one commenter wrote:

This is a major issue. We can see the old data is left in the filesystem, but it’s not “found” by Chrome 79 – which I consider even worse – for one, it breaks the apps as it’s not available.

And another on the same day:

We have verified that all our clients with Chrome/WebView updated to v79 have lost all their app data.

As its name suggests, WebView provides a way for app developers to integrate web pages or even applications inside Android apps using a cut-down browser that’s part of Chrome.

Used to display everything from login pages to terms and conditions documents, it’s useful because it avoids the need to visit the original web pages by launching a separate browser app.

Google has shifted WebView function into and out of Chrome more than once – versions 7, 8 and 9 use it, but from Android 10, it once again becomes a separate app.