Android 12 beta 4 may restart or factory reset in the event of multiple app crashes (when checking app info)

Android 12 may have achieved platform stability but is currently still in its development phase with the final release still being several weeks away. Platform stability means that all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are now final.

But platform stability doesn’t really translate to complete respite from bugs and issues, and there is always a risk of certain phone breaking problems popping up out of nowhere.

One of these has been spotted by multiple users currently running Android 12 beta 4 on their Google Pixel devices. The steps to reproduce it have been given below.

1- Open Play Store
2- Open Recent Apps and tap on Play Store to get App info
3- Try to tap Storage as fast as possible (otherwise, Settings will crash)
4- Try to erase cache or storage as fast as possible

5- Settings will eventually crash, not giving you the time to erase cache or storage. Repeat these steps multiple times.
6- Android will restart for the first time with no prompt
7- If you keep doing this, Android will restart with the message Factory Reset
Source

While the factory reset message only pops up on extreme scenarios, as indicated above, the crash issues are pretty easy to reproduce.

Simply long-press any app icon, hit the App info button, and you will see that the Settings icon will flash but not open. Repetition will lead to the popping up of an error message.

The crashes are valid for the App info page of every single app, meaning that there could be an issue with the Settings app itself.

The issue isn’t exactly new though. There have been reports about the app info crash issue since the Android 12 beta 2 days. Heck, it may have been present on the first beta itself.

That said, the bit about the factory reset prompt is intended behavior and is the system’s way of attempting to recover from genuine bootloops. It seems to be the safety mechanism on Android called Rescue Party in action.

Whatever the cause, the issue has now been marked as fixed on the official Android IssueTracker site. This means that app info crash issues on Android 12 beta 4 will no longer be occurring with the next beta.

The next beta should be released anytime from now. In the meantime, if you wish to access the App info page for any app, use the long cut alternative by searching up the app in Settings search bar.

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