NPE on com.android.server.autofill.RemoteFillService$PendingRequest.cancel()

Question

Crashlytics is reporting NullPointerException related to Auto Fill as shown below:

Fatal Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method
'boolean com.android.server.autofill.RemoteFillService$PendingRequest.cancel()' on a null object reference
  at android.os.Parcel.readException(Parcel.java:1965)
  at android.os.Parcel.readException(Parcel.java:1905)
  at android.app.IActivityManager$Stub$Proxy.reportAssistContextExtras(IActivityManager.java:8297)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.handleRequestAssistContextExtras(ActivityThread.java:3210)
  at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1913)
  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:105)
  at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:164)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:6944)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java)
  at com.android.internal.os.Zygote$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(Zygote.java:327)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1374)

Caused by android.os.RemoteException: Remote stack trace:
  at com.android.server.autofill.RemoteFillService.cancelCurrentRequest(RemoteFillService.java:177)
  at com.android.server.autofill.Session.cancelCurrentRequestLocked(Session.java:465)
  at com.android.server.autofill.Session.access$1000(Session.java:118)
  at com.android.server.autofill.Session$1.onHandleAssistData(Session.java:322)
  at com.android.server.am.ActivityManagerService.reportAssistContextExtras(ActivityManagerService.java:14713)

However, the stack does not include anything from my app yet crash is happening on my side.

Answer 1

This is not an issue with your app but with specific Android OEMs. Seems to be happening more frequently on Samsung Devices and not seen on Pixel Devices. Here is an issue report to Google which is closed as 'Won't Fix'. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/123311621

Since the crash is happening because of autofill. I would recommend disabling autofill for the specific view by setting importanForAutofill as false/no. https://developer.android.com/reference/android/R.attr.html#importantForAutofill