Protecting WebView with Safe Browsing

Posted by Nate Fischer, Software Engineer

Since 2007, Google Safe Browsing has been protecting users across the web from phishing and malware attacks. It protects over three billion devices from an increasing number of threats, now also including unwanted software across desktop and mobile platforms. Today, we're announcing that Google Play Protect is bringing Safe Browsing to WebView by default, starting in April 2018 with the release of WebView 66.

Developers of Android apps using WebView no longer have to make any changes to benefit from this protection. Safe Browsing in WebView has been available since Android 8.0 (API level 26), using the same underlying technology as Chrome on Android. When Safe Browsing is triggered, the app will present a warning and receive a network error. Apps built for API level 27 and above can customize this behavior with new APIs for Safe Browsing.

An example of a warning shown when Safe Browsing detects a dangerous site. The style and content of the warning will vary depending on the size of the WebView.

You can learn more about customizing and controlling Safe Browsing in the Android API documentation, and you can test your application today by visiting the Safe Browsing test URL (chrome://safe-browsing/match?type=malware) while using the current WebView beta.