A dedicated WebView for Facebook's Android in-app browser

Facebook's Android app has long depended on the Android System WebView—a Chromium-based component—to render links and web content inside the app. On Android, unlike other mobile platforms, the System WebView can be updated independently of the OS via Google Play, which is generally good for security. In practice, however, Meta has observed that many users keep the Facebook app up to date while leaving Chrome and WebView apps on outdated versions. That gap exposes users to known exploits and also produces app crashes tied to the way Android handles WebView updates.

To address both problems, Meta has been building and testing its own Chromium-based WebView for the Facebook Android app, following a path already taken by Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, and Mozilla Firefox, all of which ship custom browser engines on Android. The new component is designed as a drop-in replacement for the System WebView inside Facebook, with no change to how users interact with in-app web content.

Security: patches ship with the app

Bundling the WebView with the Facebook app means users get Chromium security fixes as part of their regular app updates, eliminating the lag caused by separate WebView update cycles. Meta says the WebView behaves in the same manner as the System WebView and that it performs regular rebases onto the latest Chromium releases to stay aligned with industry security practices.

Stability: avoiding update-induced crashes

The crash issue stems from how Android manages WebView code. When an app uses the System WebView, Android loads that code into the app's memory. This isolation has benefits—one app's WebView usage doesn't interfere with another's, and apps can't inspect each other's WebView activity. But it creates a problem at update time.

When the System WebView app is updated, Android must ensure no app is running an old, incompatible version of the code. Since Android can't cleanly unload the WebView from a running app's memory, it forces any app that has used the WebView API to crash—even if the user isn't currently viewing web content. Meta's own WebView sidesteps this by loading Chromium from the Facebook app's storage rather than from the System WebView app's storage. That removes the need for Android to stop the app to complete a System WebView update.

Performance: enabling the GPU process

There's also a rendering improvement. Modern browser engines use a compositor—the component that determines how a page is drawn—which normally runs in a separate GPU process and asynchronously from other browser work. The System WebView's compositor can't do that because it must accommodate the variety of ways Android apps display it, forcing it to run synchronously with the Android widget layout.

Because Meta controls how its WebView is displayed within Facebook, it can enable the GPU process. That yields better rendering performance and stability for web pages and Instant Games.

Open source and standards work

Meta has a record of contributing to upstream Chromium and web standards, including the isInputPending and JavaScript Self Profiling APIs, both of which originated at Meta and were committed upstream for all Chromium-based browsers. Meta is also active in the WebXR standard effort. The company says it intends to continue submitting major changes from this new engine to upstream Chromium.

What users should know

  • The change is a backend update to how web content loads in Facebook's in-app browser on Android.
  • It improves security and performance and reduces crashes when viewing websites inside the Facebook app.
  • Mozilla, Microsoft, and Samsung already ship custom browser engines on Android.
  • The update does not change existing privacy choices on Meta services.