Google has halted the rollout of Chrome 79 on Android after mobile app developers reported a major bug that was deleting user data and resetting mobile apps.
The bug occurred during the update process from Chrome 78 to Chrome 79. In Chrome 79, Google developers changed the location of the Chrome directory.
In a bug report filed last week, Google developers admitted to making a mistake with this operation and forgetting to move the contents of localStorage or WebSQL into the new Chrome 79 directory, making the data inaccessible for all users.
localStorage and WebSQL are widely used in mobile apps
Both localStorage and WebSQL are storage mechanisms that allow a website or web app to store data on a user's device, inside a user's Chrome profile directory.
While some websites use localStorage or WebSQL, most prefer to use dedicated database servers to store user data on the server-side.
However, localStorage and WebSQL are widely used on mobile devices, and especially by mobile app developers.
These days, many Android apps are nothing more than a website loaded inside the WebView component -- a stripped-down version of Chrome.
These apps heavily depend on mechanisms like localStorage or WebSQL to save settings and user data locally, instead of using a separate and bulkier SQLite database.
When Chrome 79 started rolling out, these apps lost access to all the files and data saved inside the old Chrome 78 localStorage and WebSQL folders.
App users lost data, settings, files, and even access to their accounts.
"When I say 'broken,' I mean that their encrypted login information has been ..
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