1

Google claimed that the wikiHow app supports Android 4.1+ (API 16+), so I am curious to install the latest version into an phone running Android 4.1.2 Jellybean. Upon opening the app, this was greeted with an connection error. Since I can connect to wikiHow on newer devices, I can confirm that it was a TLS issue on outdated Android WebView. wikiHow requires TLS 1.2 or later.

TLS 1.1 and 1.2 was introduced in WebView in Android 4.4 (API 19).

Screenshot_2025-03-17-08-08-18
Screenshot_2025-03-17-08-08-18 480×800 52.7 KB

I would like developers to choose either:

  • Support TLS 1.0-1.1 on wikiHow to support Android 4.1-4.3 (API 16-18)
  • Increase minimum API level (minSdkVersion) to 19 (Android 4.4)

I think latter is better as only 0.1% of users are still using Android 4.1-4.3.

1 Like
2

Thanks for reporting this! I’ll see if we can get a fix out.

3

Supporting older TLS versions would be a security issue.

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So dropping support for Android 4.1-4.3 would be a good idea as TLS 1.2 is introduced in WebView in Android 4.4.

5

Yes, I agree with that statement.