This week, Android users received the update to Chrome 79, delivering phishing protections and the ability to rearrange the order of bookmarks.
Although these features sound good, it seems that this version of the browser is triggering some WebView issues, affecting Android apps and causing user data loss.
A few days ago, several Android app developers that rely on WebView and local storage reported experiencing issues that led to their apps losing data after users updated to Chrome 79. The incident was considered a major issue that needed to be solved immediately.
Users experienced this issue through complete resets of their apps as if they had just downloaded them for the first time. Most users blamed developers for this problem, not being aware that the issue is deeper than they thought.
By Friday afternoon, Google engineers solved the issue. The Chromium team gave a public apology Saturday morning, while Google is currently working on a solution that minimizes the data loss. We can expect a new patch to roll out in about 5-7 days.
No notable Android apps seem to have been affected so far.