Getting to play with Android betas is one of the best things about owning a Pixel phone. But they are,  you know, betas, so weird and frustrating stuff is more or less guaranteed to happen at some point. Case in point: many users have been experiencing constant crashes for major apps over the last week or so.

But it’s a familiar problem: back in March a ton of people saw something similar happen on stable versions of Android, eventually tracked down to an issue with the WebView application. WebView is a tool that lets apps like Gmail hook into the Chrome browser to display web content without leaving their own app window. Fortunately, users at the Google Issue Tracker found a solution.

If you’re seeing constant app crashes on Android 12, just go to the Settings menu, tap Apps, All apps, then scroll down to “Android System WebView.” Tap “Disable,” then confirm the pop-up.

Enable the app again to reset it, and you should be good to go. If you see apps (especially those that you know rely on WebView) crashing again, just repeat the process. Hopefully the issue will be resolved with an app or Android update soon, but at least there appears to be an easy workaround.

  • Thanks:
  • Ramit