Phantom update for Android made phone unusable ... again. Any ideas?

ensete

So I had my phone working fine for me. Last night I hit the power button to wake it up and instead of just seeing my home screen, I get an "Android is starting" message. Uh oh. Looks like I forgot to re-disable Google Play Store and even though I have auto updates disabled they shoved some update onto the phone without my consent

Needless to say the phone instantly caused eye strain. Ii checked all my settings, nothing changed. I checked to make sure HW overlays were disabled, they are. Brightness level is unchanged. System OS version is the same so no phone update. The only thing I could find was a version change in the Android System Webview component, from version 135.0.7049.111 to version 137.0.7151.61. There is no option to uninstall the upgrade or roll back that I can find. Under Developer Options it is the only version listed under the "Webview Implementation" section. I disabled Android System Webview but it doesn't seem to be any better.

Any ideas of other things to check or how to roll back this damned forced updated?

ensete

Well I did figure out one thing, in case Google leads others here...

If you want to uninstall an update to Android System Webview, you can't do it fro the Play Store because searching for it does not bring it up. You need to go into your Settings, then Apps, then "Advanced", and tap where it says "Installed from Google Play Store" and that will bring up the Play Store pages and you can uninstall updates from there.

I did that and no I need to sleep off my migraine to see if that fixed the problem.

Staycalmsyndrome

Android System Webview 137 is based on Chromium 137 engine and cannot be disabled because apps use it to render certain web pages(ex: login pages). Windows has a similar thing with Edge Webview2. If you'd like to test older webview, you could try installing an older version of Chrome browser for Android, that comes with its own webview, and can be selected under 'Webview implementation' section.

Another culprit could be Google Play Services but to disable autoupdates for that you need root.

ensete

Staycalmsyndrome You can disable Android System Webview, so far the only thing that it broke (so far) was GMail. My texting app, Chrome, and YouTuibe all worked. Of course I do have an older version of Chrome which I guess uses it's own rendering engine and not Android System Webview. I cannot choose the Chrome WebView as the Webview implementation under Dev Tools, it only lists the version I downgraded to.

Staycalmsyndrome

ensete Very interesting. I actually installed Chrome Stable, Beta, Dev, Canary, and they each come with their own webview:

I have an older version of Android though.

Sunspark

I like the Chrome webview updates because an ebook app I have depends on it.

I have a bunch of browsers installed (no dev versions though), but the only choices I have in the webview implementation is the Chrome one and the system one which is old, v74.

If you want a fast enough browser that doesn't use the Chrome webview at all, why not try Firefox Focus?

Staycalmsyndrome

What Android version do you have? From Android 10 and up, it seems that you need root, a magisk module and to install a webview apk to get a second selectable option in developer tools. More details here.

I keep mine on an older system webview and just select the newer one when needed.

ensete

It's an Android 12 device. It came with Chrome 90 installed and I never updated it. At some point I had Webview 135 on there, the auto update upped it to 137, but uninstalling that update put it to a version 90. Still not great other things may have slipped in.

I have a previous phone that was better for my eyes, it had broken (stopped charging) but I managed to repair it by replacing the port and the over voltage regulator so it charges again.

Sunspark

Mine is Android 9.

Honestly, all webview does is be the browser rendering engine. If you downgraded to 90, then that should be it.

ensete

The phone seems to be OK now. Downgrading to Webview 90, disabling the Google play store (to hopefully stop more stealth updates) and giving my brain 3 days to unscramble seem to have made the phone usable again

Shit like this is why I want Google to have to spin off Android.