The System WebView compositor needs to account for the various ways Android allows apps to display it. Most significantly, Meta says its new WebView improves performance by running its compositor, i.e., the component that decides how to display a page, on a GPU thread.

Additionally, since the Facebook app is now independent from the default OS WebView, when users decide to upgrade the latter, the OS will not need to kill the Facebook app to force it to reload its WebViews. Meta says they will rebase their WebView code on the latest Chromium codebase at regular intervals, thus benefiting of any security patches to the latest Chromium. Keeping the WebView up-to-date will thus prevent potential stability and security issues caused by outdated versions. This WebView can update in sync with Facebook app updates, and function as a drop-in replacement for the System WebView inside the Facebook app without compromising or changing the user experience in any way. While Android allows users to upgrade the system browser separately from the OS itself, many users update their Facebook app but not Chrome or the WebView app, says Meta.

The new WebView, which has not been open-sourced yet, improves security, stability, and performance, says Meta.

Meta has been developing its own Chromium-based WebView for Android for a few years and has now started rolling it out to users of its Facebook app.

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