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

Answer 2

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

Looking at #30 in that discussion, this solved my problem:

// add to gradle module:app
configurations.all {
    resolutionStrategy {
        force 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.1.0-rc01'
    }
}

Answer 3

I went through the same trouble and actually what solved it was changing the context in the constructor to context.getApplicationContext().

After that it's building and rendering with no problems on Android 5.

Answer 4

Fixed in androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.2.0-alpha02 Just update your app build.gradle file with line:

implementation "androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.2.0-alpha02"