Fix: Android apps suddenly crashing?

Just an FYI: there’s been a recent update (Tuesday, March 23, 2021) to the “Android System WebView” which was buggy and is causing many apps that rely on it to crash (they’ll do one of the following: refuse to open at-all — tapping their icon does nothing; they open, but quickly close; or you’ll get a crash with an error-message, similar to “failed to render content”).

The biggest ones you’ll notice are your e-mails apps: GMail, Outlook and Yahoo! Mail are all confirmed affected, and I believe from other articles the Samsung Mail app is too. Though pretty-much any app that features built-in adverts will be affected (as those ads are usually rendered via WebView), as will any app that essentially just renders a website inside the app (so many banking apps, puzzle-type games or weather apps). Web-browser wise, I think only Opera Mini should be affected — certainly I’ve had no-issue with any others.

To fix the issue, go into the Google Play Store app > menu (three-lines, top-left) > “My Apps & Games” > and update the “WebView” app if listed. Apps should instantly start working again after updating it, but if not a phone restart might be required. (Google themselves confirming the issue advise to also update the Google Chrome app at the same time).