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Comment by aritmo | Hacker News Reader

There is a misconception that removing Android Webview is "fixing" the problem. The proper word is that removing the updated Android Webview is "a temporary workaround" until an updated Android Webview is released.

You cannot remove Android Webview because it is an essential part of Android. By "removing" the package, you are removing the latest update and revert back to the old (and probably insecure) version of Android Webview that came with the initial Android version of the phone.

In the end, Google eventually released a new package now, so you can perform the update of Android Webview to the latest version.

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I assume that this is uninstalling updates, which means that you are back to the WebView that came with your phone. This obviously opens a whole new can of worms as now you may be years of security updates behind.

I really wish that popular stores had an option to roll back one version until the next update came out.

This is why auto-update is turned off for me. You just cant trust blindly updating things because there is no undo button for breaking changes.

How do you evaluate updates? And how do you rollback? It seems like you are still basically relying on "find the APK somewhere" for rollbacks still.

Really if I do not need new functionality and it's not a sensitive app (i.e. one that deals with funds, email, text, etc..) I just dont. Some of my APKs are REALLY REALLY old. If i get a new phone, I save them off and roll them over.

If its for an app that has potentially significant security issues I'll wait a while and monitor the reviews and check the web before I update (I'll also backup the installed APK before updating) so I can rollback if I need to. But the number of apps on my phone for this is very slim.

Dont see an update option for this app in the app store. It says last release was March 12th. How exactly do I get this update?

I was able to just do a Chrome update to solve the issue on my phone.

No action required if you’re not experiencing issues.

If you’re affected and not able to update, trying to “uninstall updates” for “Android System WebView” will revert it to ROM-included unaffected version and solve it.

That sounds very risky, since untrusted code shown in any webview can then exploit long fixed chrome bugs.

I uninstalled the updates and was then able to install the March 22 version. It didn't offer any update until I did that.

It is definitely fixing the problem. As is the entire phone is unusable because you cannot open many of the most important apps.

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