Developer Adaptive Icons Bug That Causes Bootloops in Android Oreo

Happening Studios, the developer of Swipe for Facebook, has discovered an application bug with Android 8.0 Oreo's adaptive icons which causes bootloops. It's pretty serious: On affected devices, it repeatedly crashes the system UI and any launcher which uses adaptive icons. Users can't even reach the settings menu to uninstall the rogue app.

The only way to fix the adaptive icons bug is to switch Android's USB Debugging setting on, plug the phone into a PC with ADB and Fastboot installed, and use the following ADB command to uninstall the buggy app:

  adb uninstall   

Users who don't have USB debugging enabled before they install the app are out of luck — they have to factory reset their phones. Thankfully, though, the Android dev team are aware of the issue and working on a fix which should be released with Android 8.1.

Why Are Adaptive Icons Causing Bootloops?

The adaptive icons bug stems from sloppy coding. Buggy apps' foreground asset — the bit containing the top layer of the icon — have the same name as the XML file containing the code which tells the device where said foreground asset is. Effectively, the code for finding the foreground app's icon creates a circular reference.

  **<foreground android:drawable="@mipmap/ic_launcher_main"/>**  

In one example, a developer used the name "ic_launcher_main.xml" to refer to the XML file, which interfered with the foreground asset called "ic_launcher main." The file was repeatedly called until it eventually crashed devices.

It's a bit strange that the bug got through Google's quality assurance team, but it's good that it's being fixed soon. What's really problematic is the fact that lots of users had to factory reset their devices, but hopefully that'll be a thing of the past soon.

Source: Bleeping Computer

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