The current Android 14 beta and the recent Google Messages update do not work together at the moment. If you’ve run into Messages crashing issues over and over again, you’re not alone, but you also have some fixes to try.

A couple of readers mentioned the glitch to us today, and there’s a long thread or three on the Android Beta subreddit discussing it. Simply put, the recent Google Messages update breaks the app on an Android 14 Beta device. You cannot use it. This is so bad.

Looks like people have narrowed it down to Google Messages v20230428_01_RCOO, the latest Google Messages beta. Yesterday, Google released the update widely through the beta channel, so many people realized that it had been hacked.

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

Fixed Google Messages crash on Pixel phones (Android 14)

So what can you do to fix this if you can no longer send messages through Google Messages on Android 14? There is a simple solution:

• You can uninstall updates for Google Messages by going to Google Play (here), searching for Google Messages, and then clicking the Uninstall button in the store list. This won’t remove the app from your phone, but it will get rid of the recent update.
• From there, try not to update the app for now. We need Google to release a fixed build to the world.
• You can also exit the Messages beta program and upgrade to a stable build. In a few weeks, you will be able to join the Google Messages beta program again.

Hope this helps and sorry to bother you.

Hello Nicholas and Jared!