WebView Crash on Android 5-5.1 (API 21-22) Resources$NotFoundException: String resource ID #0x2040002

Question

I am in the process of updating an Android app from API 27 to API 29 and I noticed that I get a crash when trying to render a WebView on an emulator based on 5.0 and/or 5.1. Thi

Answer 1

It seems to be a bug with appcompat 1.1.0 - https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/141132133

While you can try downgrading appcompat or wait for a fix, you can also try

Using a custom WebView:

private fun Context.getLollipopFixWebView(): Context {
    return if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT in 21..22) {
        createConfigurationContext(Configuration())
    } else this
}

/**
 * Workaround appcompat-1.1.0 bug https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/141132133
 */
class LollipopFixWebView(context: Context, attrs: AttributeSet? = null, defStyle: Int = 0) :
    WebView(context.getLollipopFixWebView(), attrs, defStyle)

Or adding this workaround to the parent Activity of your WebView:

    // Workaround appcompat-1.1.0 bug https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/141132133
    override fun applyOverrideConfiguration(overrideConfiguration: Configuration) {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT in 21..22) {
            return
        }
        super.applyOverrideConfiguration(overrideConfiguration)
    }

Credits and kudos to https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/issues/5507 There the guy believes it's happening to Android 7 as well but I couldn't replicate

Updates

The custom WebView solution may introduce a new problem: keyboard not showing for all Android versions.

So we'll need to set isFocusable and isFocusableInTouchMode to the custom WebView class prevent such problem

class LollipopFixWebView : WebView {
    constructor(context: Context) : this(context, null)
    constructor(context: Context, attrs: AttributeSet?) : this(context, attrs, 0)
    constructor(context: Context, attrs: AttributeSet?, defStyleAttr: Int) : super(context.getLollipopFixWebView(), attrs, defStyleAttr) {
        isFocusable = true
        isFocusableInTouchMode = true
    }
}

Disclaimers

My minSdk version is 21 (Lollipop) so can't guarantee my solution works for apps with lower minSdk version