Since the introduction of WebView as an updatable APK in Android L, WebView has had some conception of pre-release channels. The details of the implementation of these channels has differed between different generations of WebView, and this document explains those details.
Currently we only support Android Q and above for new WebView updates. If you would like to learn about what we did for old OS versions, see legacy OS behavior.
For Android Q+, WebView and Chrome are separately installed APKs. However, Google began building a separate package of WebView for each of the four Chrome channels: Stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary. Users can find each of these four channels of WebView on the Play Store and install them simultaneously on a single device. Also like Monochrome, users can use the “WebView implementation” menu to choose which installed WebView the system should use.
Trichrome WebView APKs (of all channels) have a versionCode value with a final digit of 3 (to match Trichrome Chrome's versionCode).
Users may also choose to opt into the beta program for Android System WebView (com.google.android.webview). Users in this track will get “TrichromeOpenBeta,” which is a special build variant with the same version and behavior as TrichromeBeta but using WebView's stable channel package name. This variant has a unique versionCode value by using a ‘4’ instead of a ‘3’ as the build variant digit.
