Google Messages Update Causing Crashes on Android 14

The current Android 14 Beta and a recent Google Messages update are not working together at the moment. If you have run into issues with Messages crashing over and over again, you are not alone, but you also have some fixes to try.

A couple of readers mentioned the crashing to us today and there is a lengthy thread or three at the Android Beta subreddit discussing it. To put it simply, a recent update to Google Messages breaks the app when on an Android 14 Beta device. You can’t use it. It’s that bad.

Folks appear to have narrowed it down to Google Messages v20230428_01_RCOO, which is the latest beta version of Google Messages. Google widely pushed an update through the beta channel yesterday, hence the reason so many realized it was busted.

I’ve seen some suggest this only happens on Android 14 Beta 1.1, but I’m seeing it crash on my Pixel 7 running Android 14 Beta 1 as well. This really seems like a Google Messages bug, not an Android 14 bug.

Fix Google Messages crashing on Pixel phones (Android 14)

So what can you do to fix it if you can no longer send messages through Google Messages on Android 14? There’s a simple fix:

• You can uninstall updates to Google Messages by going into Google Play (here), searching for Google Messages, and then hitting the “Uninstall” button on the store listing. This won’t remove the app from your phone, but it will get rid of that recent update.
• From there, try not to update the app for the time being. We need Google to push a fixed build into the world.
• You could also leave the Messages beta program and update to a stable build. In a few weeks, you could then rejoin the beta program for Google Messages.

Hope that helps, and sorry for the troubles.

Cheers Nicholas and Jared!