WebView is a system component of Android which enables the apps you use to show content from the web. Most apps you use every day use WebView in some way.
Let us know what you think and help improve WebView for everyone on Android. Please file bugs and feedback at https://goo.gl/9qkbdn.
You can reach out to the team through the android-webview-dev Google group.
WebView needs regular security updates just like your browser. We release a new version every 6 weeks to make sure you stay safe while using apps on your phone.
WebView is built on top of the open source Chromium project, but it doesn’t share any data with Google Chrome.
In Android 7, 8, and 9 (Nougat/Oreo/Pie), WebView is built into Chrome. Because they share so much underlying code, this saves space and memory on your device. They still don’t share any data, however, and you can disable Google Chrome at any time without impairing your device. When Chrome is disabled, WebView will switch to a standalone version which isn't combined with Chrome.
No. Although WebView and Chrome share a package in Android N, O, and P, they don’t share data and Chrome-specific features like Sync and Data-Saver aren’t available inside of WebView.
We don‘t recommend that you disable WebView on your device. Apps which use WebView are likely to crash or malfunction, and you won’t receive important security updates.
If WebView is already disabled on your device and cannot be enabled, that is normal: when Chrome is being used as the WebView implementation, the separate WebView package is automatically disabled to avoid downloading redundant updates. You never need to manually enable or disable WebView.
