Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Pixel 7
TL;DR
- Some Pixel phone owners are reporting that a variety of apps are crashing on their devices.
- It’s believed the problem could be related to the Carrier Services or Play Services apps.
We saw a pretty crazy bug on Android in 2021, when a faulty version of the Android System Webview app resulted in a ton of other apps crashing. It now looks like we’ve got another app-crashing bug, albeit on a smaller scale.
Some Pixel owners are reporting on Reddit (h/t: 9to5Google) that a variety of first-party and third-party apps are crashing for them. It seems like a variety of Pixel models are affected, with Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 6, and Pixel 7 series owners chiming in to report the issue.
Nevertheless, these users report that apps like Chrome, Gmail, Messages, Pokemon Go, Adblock Browser, and YouTube are crashing for them. Oddly enough, some Pixel owners are also reporting that they can’t actually update their phones as the System Update page crashes as well.
How do you fix this Pixel app crashing bug?
Redditors have tried various workarounds, such as uninstalling updates for specific affected apps, restarting the phone, rebooting in safe mode, and a factory reset. However, some Pixel owners have reported that updating to the latest version of the Carrier Services and/or Play Services apps (if updates are available) or uninstalling the latest installed versions addresses the problem. So we’d recommend you try the latter approach first before opting for the more dramatic solutions like a factory reset.
For what it’s worth, I’m not suffering from this issue on my Pixel 7 Pro running stable Android 13. But that’s likely due to the fact that I have automatic app updates disabled on my device. However, two colleagues have also reported no app crashes on their Pixel phones. We’re also not seeing many reports about the issue on social media, suggesting that this isn’t a widespread problem right now.
Are you or were you suffering from this issue on your Pixel phone? Let us know via the comments below, and drop a comment if any workarounds helped you!
