Severe freeze bug-drag image in WebView freezes entire UI (Android 8.1, Chrome 131+)

[ttt 444]

Hi Android WebView devs,

I’d like to report a severe freeze bug that affects my old Android 8.1 phone (Vivo 1811).

I’m not technical, but here’s what I’ve confirmed:

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Device: Vivo 1811

Android version: 8.1.0

Chrome version where bug happens: 131.x and above

Chrome version where bug does NOT happen: 130.0.6723.103 and below

WebView: Forced to use Chrome (can’t be changed on this device)

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Bug details:

When using any app that shows a webpage inside it (like some browsers or games that use WebView), if I long-press an image, the image becomes “floaty” and moves with my finger like it’s draggable.

When I lift my finger, the image freezes in place - and the entire screen becomes unresponsive.

The only things that work are the power and volume buttons. The frozen image stays stuck even on the lockscreen after turning the screen off and on.

The only fix is to force reboot by holding Power + Volume Down.

This happens in multiple apps that use WebView - for example:

* The 1DM browser (not Chrome)

* The ChatGPT mobile app

* A rhythm game that opens a profile page in a WebView: if I long-press the profile picture, same bug happens.

Important:

* The bug does not happen inside the Chrome app itself - only in other apps using WebView.

* Downgrading Chrome back to version 130 fixes it completely.

* Updating to any version above 131 brings the bug back.

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Video proof:

Here’s a Google Drive link showing the bug:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/115Q_Yp4VbGE5u5p0m2wyvOm1sETr1dC7/view?usp=drivesdk

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Steps to reproduce:

1. Open any app that uses WebView.

2. Open any image in it and long-press it.

3. The image floats with your finger.

4. Release it.

5. The entire screen freezes-touch input is dead, only Power + Volume buttons work.

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Extra notes:

* Even the fingerprint sensor works: I can pull down the notification bar by swiping the sensor, but nothing else responds.

* ChatGPT says this is probably a drag-and-drop regression in the Chromium WebView layer.

I hope someone can check this out - it’s scary because it locks the whole device with no way to tap anything.

Thank you for reading!

[I. K.]

Hello,

My father has the exact same issue for ~2 years now. We could never figure out how to prevent it.

Samsung Galaxxy A5 (SM-A520F) on Android 8.1. All software up to date.

Dragging an image sometimes freezes the touchscreen. An app where it regularly happens is Wikipedia.

The small "ghost" image stays in place and the touchscreen does not react anymore to touches. Incoming notifications and calls are stil shown. Other means of input still work, e.g. the physical buttons and when using a USB mouse.

The only fix is to restart the device using the key combo.

I hope this helps.

[Sanu Dhibar]

I have Full solution of this bug.

Goto webview flags or chrome flags(if your default webciew is chrome) then disable surface control. After that your problem will solved.

[Sanu Dhibar]

I have a full solution of this bug

Goto webview flags and disable surface control or GPU rasterization . That's it , your problem is solved

If your webview is chrome then you can find those settings in chrome://flags

And if your webview is android system web view then use activity launcher to go webview settings flags.

On Monday, December 1, 2025 at 3:04:39 PM UTC+5:30 I. K. wrote:

[Nate Fischer]

+vas...@chromium.org can you please look into this reported issue involving the SurfaceControl flag? Hopefully this is a fixable bug.

Nate Fischer | Software Engineer | ntf...@google.com

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[Vasiliy Telezhnikov]

I'm a bit confused here. Is it WebView or Chrome? 

SurfaceControl API doesn't exist on Android 8 (and chrome/webview doesn't support Android 8 anymore), so the flag there should be no-op.

SurfaceControl for WebView is not enabled in code or any finch experiments at this moment either, so even on newer devices it should be causing any issues.

- Vasiliy

[I. K.]

Hello all,

Thanks for looking into this!

Thank you @Sanu for providing a potential workaround. I'll try it.

@Vasiliy: It's mainly happening with the Andoid Wikipedia app, but also other apps. Therefore I assume it's the Android System Webview. I can try to dig deeper, but having a workaround is sufficient.

Cheers,

-Ingo

[Sanu Dhibar]

Touch-initiated drag and drop could help to resolve the problem, but in chrome flags , that feature doesn't exist. I tried every settings on my phone , nothing happens, ChatGPT saying it it is Graphic related problem , but i think it is OS problem , It can be fixed either Andriod Upgrade or Webview Update(But Google stopped webview and chrome updates for android 9 and below.)

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions on how to fix the problem you're experiencing and as mentioned we don't release updates for Android 9 and earlier any more.

However, I wanted to mention that changing things in chrome://flags in the Chrome app has never had any effect on WebView, regardless of the version of Android, Chrome, or WebView. It's true that the Chrome app's code is used to implement the WebView functionality on most Android 7/8/9 devices, but this only shares the actual code - none of Chrome's configuration/settings/etc are used by WebView in any way, as it's not even possible for WebView to access Chrome's settings in the first place.

WebView has its own UI for configuring development flags, but as Vasily said, the actual Android feature that the SurfaceControl feature flag is related to doesn't exist on Android 8 and so changing the SurfaceControl flag should not have any effect.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/android-webview-dev/CAFyotZ7PaZROep0O5Qnn03D2tgOfuZGRaOAbO2Y0GUKM%3DAPPbw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

On Thu, 12 Mar 2026 at 01:02, Sanu Dhibar <sanud...@gmail.com> wrote:

One potential solution to resolve this regression would be for the WebView development team to disable the drag-and-drop API specifically for Android 8 (Oreo) environments. By mirroring the behavior of older Chrome and WebView versions—which did not support this feature on that specific OS—the stability issues currently being reported could be permanently mitigated.

Android 8 was released in 2017 and stopped receiving OS security updates in late 2021; Chrome and WebView continued to support it and provide security and functionality updates until June 2025. We won't be releasing any more updates for those OS versions; the current WebView code is only compatible with Android 10 and later.

I can't find any report of this issue occuring other than in this email thread, which wasn't sent until after we had already discontinued support for Android 8 and 9. Unfortunately this was just too late for us to act on.

I know this must be frustrating, but it's not practical to continue supporting old OS versions with extremely low usage forever.

[Sanu Dhibar]

One potential solution to resolve this regression would be for the WebView development team to disable the drag-and-drop API specifically for Android 8 (Oreo) environments. By mirroring the behavior of older Chrome and WebView versions—which did not support this feature on that specific OS—the stability issues currently being reported could be permanently mitigated.

On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 12:12 AM Torne (Richard Coles) <to...@chromium.org> wrote: