Latest version of Brave released on 4th of Nov, 2020 crashes frequently

[pongraczi]

Description

Latest version of the browser crasher for lot of people, reported on google play, too.
In my case, I sent reports via the automatic report collector.
It makes brave a very annoying and useless application, it is not possible to use it, due to that, when I try to open some articles, it crashes and lost all the open tabs/sites.

Steps to reproduce

1. Start the browser
2. Visit some sites, open some tabs
3. Just do your usual business with the browser
4. It crashes.

Actual result

Crash.

Expected result

Do not crash.

Issue reproduces how often

If I use it, less than 5 minutes it will crash, seems random, but happens really frequently.

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store version? Absolutely.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store Beta version? No idea, I do not use it.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store Nightly version? No idea, I do not use it.

Device details

• Install type (ARM, x86):Arm
• Device type (Phone, Tablet, Phablet): Phone
• Android version: Xiaomi whatever

Brave version

released on 4th of November, 2020

Website problems only

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? No idea. Default is up, that is the point.
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? No idea. I usually disable rewards after installing brave.
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No idea. I will not install and use other browser, sorry.

Additional information

On play store, several Hungarian people reported these crashes.
Here (github) I did not find any sign of this crash, there is no open tickets which describe this kind of issue.

[chris122380]

Still randomly crashing on Brave 1.16.76. when opening external links with Brave as the default browser. It's difficult to pinpoint because one link from the same web page will work just fine and then later will cause the browser to crash. Links from the following apps I have seen this issue with:
Google app
Google News
Edison Mail
Feedly Classic
Nine - Email & Calendar

Also see Brave Community discussions
https://community.brave.com/t/opened-link-from-an-external-app-closes-brave-after-short-time-of-load

and

https://community.brave.com/t/brave-constantly-crashes-when-opening-links-from-other-apps

[chris122380]

Same issue on Brave 1.17.70

[bsclifton]

cc: @SergeyZhukovsky

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Most likely related to that issue #12745. The update is coming, should be available at the end of this week.

[chris122380]

Most likely related to that issue #12745. The update is coming, should be available at the end of this week.

@SergeyZhukovsky I have been testing this on all the Brave preview 1.17.x release builds and still an issue. I'm willing to test this once a fix is available.

[chris122380]

Is still happening with release preview of Brave 1.17.73

[chris122380]

Same issue happening with Brave release preview 1.17.74 and on the latest 1.18.63 beta version.

Looks like it might have been fixed in the nightly version.

[chris122380]

Still crashes on Release Preview 1.18.70

[chris122380]

Brave release preview 1.18.71 crashed opening one of Braves own webpages when being opened from the Google news feed (from launcher). Webpage it crashed opening - https://brave.com/brave-today/

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky It has been about a month and Brave1.16.76 to Brave 1.18.75 is still unacceptably crashing when opening links from apps on Android.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@chris122380 do you have certain steps how to replicate the crash? the brave-today doesn't crash on my devices on any channels. Do you have something like:

1. I opened this;
2. I did that;
3. I got a crash.
   Or it just crashes randomly?

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky it is random when trying to open a link from the Google news feed or from email. It appears to be more common if Brave hasn't been loaded or used in a while. It will load the page and crash. If you open Brave you will see that the page did load. It doesn't care what webpage and has even done it loading Brave blog from an email. I'm thinking maybe it was fixed in one of the 1.19 nightlies but waiting to test it further in one of the releases of 1.19.x.

I haven't had this issue with any other chromium based browsers.

[chris122380]

I decided to do I clean fresh install of Brave 1.18.77. The first web page I tried to open from the Google News feed (and the first web page at all) and the page loaded to the end and then crashed the browser. Open the Brave browser then shows the page that loaded.

[chris122380]

This issue looks like it might have finally been resolved with Brave 1.18.78. I am still doing some testing on this and will also check with the Brave community.

[chris122380]

When moving from custom tabs to opening in Brave causes this same issue. I have temporarily disabled custom tabs to see if that will resolve it for now.

[chris122380]

Even with custom tabs disabled it now goes back to crashing when opening a link in Feedly. This issue appears to be with custom tabs and how Brave uses them.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@chris122380 could you replicate it consistently? Could you please post exact steps here? cc @srirambv as well for incites.

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky @srirambv it is consistently random but always will happen within about 5 to 10 minutes. Open the news article from the Google feed or from Feedly the web page will load and then the browser will crash as soon as the page is done loading. If you open Brave it will open with the page that crashed it. I have even seen this when opening links from emails as well. It appears to be more consistent with custom tabs off but it will happen with it on or off. This has consistently been an issue from Brave 1.16.76 to 1.18.78.

With this being a consistent issue it's almost impossible to use Brave on a daily basis as the default browser.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Do you have Brave set as a default browser?

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky
Yes, Brave is set as my default browser.

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky Brave 1.19.83 release preview crashed even quicker. As soon as I clicked a Google news feed article Brave opened and then crashed. I opened Brave to see if it even did anything and there was the article. If there is a way to pull crash logs please let me know how and I'd be more than happy to add them.
Brave is running as the default browser. The Google app is not a beta and neither is Feedly where this often also happens..

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@chris122380 I'm going to take a closer look on that next week.

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky I am apparently longer having this issue after resetting my phone. I decided to reset my phone due to low storage and other issues. It's possible that this crash issue could have been related to storage, upgrading from Android 9 to Android 10, or I could have been using the wrong APK build for my device from GitHub. Thank you for all the troubleshooting help on this issue. I have encouraged others in the community who have been having this issue to give feedback on this GitHub article. I would say if there are no additional comments from the community or other Brave developers then this issue has been resolved.

[chris122380]

@SergeyZhukovsky never mind I spoke too soon. After about 24 hours the next day I get the app crashing just as it did before. It first started with opening an AMP page from the Google feed and then again when using the Brave search widget.

Brave 1.18.78

[chris122380]

Just received the update to Brave 1.19.86 and still doing the same thing when opening a news article from the Google feed -https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/1/19/22238334/brave-browser-ipfs-peer-to-peer-decentralized-transfer-protocol-http-nodes.

Opened the page and crashed Brave.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Hi @chris122380, unfortunately we cannot replicate that. I had a chance to look deeply on that today, but found nothing. Are you willing to provide you device's logs? It would be awesome if you are. So basically what you need to do is to start adb using steps below and crash it, collect logs and send to us:

1. enable USB debugging on your device https://www.howtogeek.com/129728/how-to-access-the-developer-options-menu-and-enable-usb-debugging-on-android-4.2/
2. do the following https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/help/obtain-android-device-logs-using-windows-and-mac/
3. upload logs to brave.com using that link https://upload-support.brave.com/. Pick rewards section there.
   Thanks!

[chris122380]

Hi @chris122380, unfortunately we cannot replicate that. I had a chance to look deeply on that today, but found nothing. Are you willing to provide you device's logs? It would be awesome if you are. So basically what you need to do is to start adb using steps below and crash it, collect logs and send to us:

1. enable USB debugging on your device https://www.howtogeek.com/129728/how-to-access-the-developer-options-menu-and-enable-usb-debugging-on-android-4.2/
2. do the following https://www.hexnode.com/mobile-device-management/help/obtain-android-device-logs-using-windows-and-mac/
3. upload logs to brave.com using that link https://upload-support.brave.com/. Pick rewards section there.
   Thanks!

I am being asked for a payment ID when trying to upload the log file but I don't know what that is or where to find it.

Since I can only get it to happen randomly it took a while but did happen at the end of my log file but couldn't get it uploaded do to not knowing my payment ID.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Sorry @chris122380 I should have mentioned that. You can find it in brave://rewards-internals.

[chris122380]

Sorry @chris122380 I should have mentioned that. You can find it in brave://rewards-internals.

I do not have a Bat wallet setup and do not see it in brave://rewards-internals

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Ok, just put a random UUID there, you can generate it there https://www.uuidgenerator.net/. It doesn't matter version1 or 4

[chris122380]

Ok, just put a random UUID there, you can generate it there https://www.uuidgenerator.net/. It doesn't matter version1 or 4

Case #: ba953c08-1c3a-408a-a9f1-9db49f686022

Issue seems to happen less and less per update and more on wifi. I tried doing a second log today at work but couldn't get it to do it over cell service. The randomness of this makes it difficult to log. Happens maybe 2-3 times in a 24 hour period.. Where older 1.18, 1.17, and 1.16 brave versions would do it multiple times an hour.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

Hi @chris122380 , thank you, I've got your logs, analysing them.

[kjozwiak]

@SergeyZhukovsky is there anything QA can do here in terms of verifications? I don't really see any STR/Cases other than browsing and making sure Brave isn't crashing. Is there a particular website that's causing the crashes? There's no STR in brave/brave-core#7763 either. Do we label this as QA/No and just make sure 1.20.x is stable when using it while we run through verifications/manual passes?

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@kjozwiak marked as QA/No

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@chris122380 that should have been resolved, thanks for the logs again. The fix should appear in the next Nightly update and in the next stable update as well. Would you mind to check is it fixed or not as we were not able to replicate it still. Thanks.

[chris122380]

I am currently running the latest stable version of Brave 1.19.88 (January 28th) and I don't appear to be having any issues. I'm not sure which stable version the patch is on but so far I'd say all is good.

[SergeyZhukovsky]

@chris122380 the fix is not there yet, it's just mean you cannot replicate it for some reason currently :).

[kjozwiak]

@chris122380 we just released 1.19.91 CR: 88.0.4324.146 a few hours ago which includes this fix. You should see the update soon as it's currently being phased at 1%. Let us know once you've received it if things improved.

[chris122380]

@chris122380 we just released 1.19.91 CR: 88.0.4324.146 a few hours ago which includes this fix. You should see the update soon as it's currently being phased at 1%. Let us know once you've received it if things improved.

I have not yet received the update but I will keep you posted. If I find issues I'll try to get another bug report. It may take a week or so as I'm recovering from surgery.

[kjozwiak]

@chris122380 we just released 1.19.91 CR: 88.0.4324.146 a few hours ago which includes this fix. You should see the update soon as it's currently being phased at 1%. Let us know once you've received it if things improved.

I have not yet received the update but I will keep you posted. If I find issues I'll try to get another bug report. It may take a week or so as I'm recovering from surgery.

Sounds good! Thanks again for the report/help narrowing down the issue. Wishing you a speedy recovery!