The Google Play Store will soon auto-detect crashing apps and prompt you to update them

You all know the standard Android experience while using an old, out-of-date phone. You may often come across apps that either can’t or simply won’t run properly on a handset, and are met with frequent crashes. Traditionally, you would just open the app’s settings, force quit it, clear the cache and sometimes the storage in order to solve the problem.

It looks like Google is finally taking charge of this unfortunate user experience issue by stepping in and offering a solution. Thanks to some digging by Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, it’s been discovered that the company will be rolling out a prompt that should appear any time an app crashes during use.

Update the app to fix crashes

The app stopped working, but the latest update for the app may fix the issue. Install the update and then open the app again. If you want to update later, go to %1$s in Google Play.

Google Support

Of course, the only other stipulation is that an update to that specific app must also be available. In theory, this seems fairly simple, and I’m not sure why it was never implemented before now. Once an app crashes (hopefully the first time it occurs), you should be automatically taken to the Play Store listing for it where you can tap the green ‘Update’ button. So long as the developer has implemented a fix for that crash, the issue should no longer persist upon launching it after that point.

Any opportunity Google has to inform Android users of what’s going on with their device and to assist them in having the best experience possible is a positive in my eyes, so I’m down for this update. Can you think of any other ways that the company could streamline the user experience? If so, let me know in the comments!