[Problem/Bug]: WebView2 in an UWP Game instantly bugchecks / crashes the entire Xbox OS on both Xbox One and Series

[Pasquiindustry]

What happened?

Long story short: a game - not an app - with a WebView2 bugcheckes / crashes the entire OS if run on an Xbox One and some Xbox Series. When the control gets called, the Xbox logo on the stand-by button just blinks and restarts itself instantly.
It's always crashing on Xbox One. Sometimes it can launch on Xbox Series S, but there's degraded performance.

This doesn't happen on apps, only games.

Where it happens?

❌ Xbox One retail mode -> Any Game - not apps - with WebView2 crashes the system.
⚠️ Xbox One dev mode -> Crashes the system if the package is set as UWP Game. It works flawlessly as UWP App.
✔️ Xbox Series X -> No issues reported
⚠️ Xbox Series S -> Some issue reported here too. In my tests, I got some "Out of memory" messages and 1 crash registered on the Microsoft Store (STOWED_EXCEPTION_80004003). One notable thing is that, on retail, the WebView2 takes about 8 to 12 seconds to load a simple html page loaded with SetVirtualHostNameToFolderMapping. Note that the issue happens even without a SetVirtualHostNameToFolderMapping or EnsureCoreWebView2Async
✔️ Windows PC -> No issues
✔️ HoloLens -> No issues, apart from controls which is not the issue here.

Replicate the issue

I tried multiple variants to try to find the cause of the issue. Here's one of the simpliest:

1. Make a new C# UWP app with Visual Studio
2. Put the app as Release x64
3. Wait for the NuGet packages to initialize
4. Install Microsoft.UI.Xaml from NuGet
5. Add the WebView2 to the project. I tried multiple ways which I will explain in the section below
6. Associate the app to an identity on the Microsoft Store
7. Create the appxupload
8. Upload to the Microsoft Store
9. Run on Xbox One in retail mode or in dev mode as a "Game". The app will crash

What I tried?

I tried most of these combinations and always got a crash on Xbox One
NOTE: some of these tests were made in october 2025, so some versions may not be updated

• Using different versions of Microsoft.UI.Xaml. The default is 2.8.7 but also tried 2.8.6
• Using different versions of Microsoft.Web.WebView2. Usually it's a transitive package stuck on version 1.0.2849, but it's also possible to install different versions, up to 1.0.3712-prerelease, which I did without success. Also tried some older versions too.
• Manually updated Microsoft.Windows.SDK.BuildTools to 10.0.26100.6901 and Microsoft.Windows.SDK.BuildTools.MSIX to 1.7.20250829.1. They're usually stuck at 10.0.22621.3233 and 1.3.20250314.1 and they can't be updated since both are implicit SDK references
• Used Visual Studio 17.14 (latest version), 17.10 and 18.1.0
• Made the app by using two templates "Empty UWP App" with .NET Native and AOT (.NET 9) and "Empty UWP App (.NET Native), which should be .NET 5?
• Supported OS Version. Tried 26100, 19041, 17763
• Target OS Version. Tried both 26100 and 22621
• Also released some packages made from scratch in a newly installed copy of Windows 11 with a newly installed copy of Visual Studio 2022 Community
• Run the app without a WebView2 and by loading the WebView2 by clicking on a button: it works until the WebView2 gets loaded, than crashes
• Run without the App.Current.RequiresPointerMode = ApplicationRequiresPointerMode.WhenRequested; We can see the web cursor before the crash
• Made packages with and without multiple capabilities
• Tested with and without <WebView2LoaderPreference>Static</WebView2LoaderPreference> or <WebView2LoaderPreference>Static</WebView2LoaderPreference>
• Tested with Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("WEBVIEW2_ADDITIONAL_BROWSER_ARGUMENTS", [...]), with multiple arguments
• Tested with a control from Microsoft.UI.Xaml different than WebView2: no issue there. Only the WebView2 is crashing the system

Sample code

A bare minimum example that triggers the crash is available here https://github.com/Pasquiindustry/TestWV2CrashXbo

Here are some codes that causes the issue

• <controls:WebView2 x:Name="UiWebView"> inside the MainPage.xaml file or a "secondary" page
• Added the new WebView2() to this.Content, both inside a Loaded function (Like MainPage_Loaded) and in a function called directly after InitializeComponent();
• Made this random test

var environment = await CoreWebView2Environment.CreateAsync();
var coreWindow = Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow.GetForCurrentThread();
var controllerWindowReference = CoreWebView2ControllerWindowReference.CreateFromCoreWindow(coreWindow);
var controller = await environment.CreateCoreWebView2ControllerAsync(controllerWindowReference);
// Crash at this point. Same issue with CreateCoreWebView2CompositionControllerAsync  

Importance

Blocking. My app's basic functions are not working due to this issue.

Runtime Channel

Stable release (WebView2 Runtime)

Runtime Version

146.x

SDK Version

from 1.0.2592.51 to 1.0.3848-prerelease

Framework

WinUI2/UWP

Operating System

Xbox

OS Version

10.0.26100.7010

Repro steps

Install and open a UWP game with just a WebView2 control inside. The game should open, but instead bugchecks / crashes the entire console or has degraded performance. Here's a repro project https://github.com/Pasquiindustry/TestWV2CrashXbo

Repros in Edge Browser

No, issue does not reproduce in the corresponding Edge version

Regression

Don't know

Last working version (if regression)

No response

[github-actions]

Hi, @Pasquiindustry!

It seems that your issue contains the word "crash". If you have not already, could you attach a crash dump as a comment?

WV2 crash dumps are located in a subfolder of the app's user data folder (UDF): <UDF>\EBWebView\Crashpad\reports\. By default, the user data folder is created in the app's folder with a name like <App Exe Name>.exe.WebView2. Refer to Crash Diagnostics for more information.

Thank you for your cooperation!

[Pasquiindustry]

Post updated with all the tests I made. The issue persists.

[Pasquiindustry]

Updated with more details and a minimal repro project: https://github.com/Pasquiindustry/TestWV2CrashXbo/tree/master

Hi, @Pasquiindustry!

It seems that your issue contains the word "crash". If you have not already, could you attach a crash dump as a comment?

WV2 crash dumps are located in a subfolder of the app's user data folder (UDF): <UDF>\EBWebView\Crashpad\reports\. By default, the user data folder is created in the app's folder with a name like <App Exe Name>.exe.WebView2. Refer to Crash Diagnostics for more information.

Thank you for your cooperation!

In case it's needed: the crash is happening on the entire system (Likely a "Bug Check") and only on Xbox One in retail mode, so there isn't any dump.

Hope someone can give me a possibile idea on what's causing the issue. Any idea can be the solution at this point.
I feel I tried everything now, but maybe there's a small detail I'm missing and it's causing this catasrophic failure. It seems there's at least one WebView2 app on the Microsoft Store that works on Xbox One, but it's pretty old.

[Pasquiindustry]

#Important update:
I got myself a "new old" Xbox One to do the tests directly on real hardware without asking friends.
As per issue, the game crashes on Xbox One in retail mode. However, i found that...
it also crashes in Dev Mode if the app is set as Game and not UWP

I'll do more tests in the coming hours. I'd love to have some feedback about this issue, since it's not even assigned. Thanks

[Pasquiindustry]

I wanted to try a random thing, inspired by the code used by the Microsoft.UI.Xaml in the main WinUi2 branch

var environment = await CoreWebView2Environment.CreateAsync();
var coreWindow = Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow.GetForCurrentThread();
var controllerWindowReference = CoreWebView2ControllerWindowReference.CreateFromCoreWindow(coreWindow);
var controller = await environment.CreateCoreWebView2ControllerAsync(controllerWindowReference);
// Crash

I also tried two variants:

• with CreateFromWindowHandle instead of CreateFromCoreWindow
  With a valid handle (The one from CoreWindow -> ICoreWindowInterop) also crashes. With an random handle, the app throws an Exception
• with CreateCoreWebView2CompositionControllerAsync instead of CreateCoreWebView2ControllerAsync
  Same crash with both CoreWindow and HWND

I'm not planning to use the code above and I don't know if it's fully correct, but I wanted to try it because I want to check if the issue was related to Microsoft.UI.Xaml. I think we can confirm that the issue is between WebView2 and, maybe, DX12on11

[Pasquiindustry]

I found that the game "MakeCode Arcade Kiosk" released by Microsoft (here https://www.xbox.com/it-IT/games/store/makecode-arcade-kiosk/9P3RGVVTVB1S) to demonstrate WebView2 games on Xbox also crashes the system on my Xbox One.
WebView2 1.0.2088.41 was released on 16 october 2023 and the first version of MakeCode Arcade Kiosk was released 18 september 2021, so the issue must be pretty recent.

[abchatra]

We reproduced the issue with MakeCode Arcade Kiosk app (https://www.xbox.com/it-IT/games/store/makecode-arcade-kiosk/9P3RGVVTVB1S) on XBOX Series S with latest updates.

[Pasquiindustry]

Quick update
I ran some tests with some recently updated versions

WebView2 -> Prerelease SDK 1.0.3848-prerelease, for Runtime 146
Xbox One -> February 2026 10.0.26100.7010

The issue persists