White bar appears on Android exports starting from r487

[Danikcom]

Checks

• I have read and understand the bug report guidelines
• I checked for existing similar reports to avoid submitting a duplicate
• I verified the issue occurs in the latest beta release to avoid submitting an issue that has already been resolved

Problem description

Starting from Construct 3 r487, Android exports show a white bar at the top or bottom of the screen depending on the smartphone model.

The issue happens in both debug APK builds and release AAB builds.

To make sure the problem is not related to my project, I created a very simple test project containing only a single sprite. The issue still appears in r487.

I compared the exact same project exported from:

r476.4 → everything displays correctly

r487 → white bar appears

Export settings:

This issue is very serious because I already have a released Google Play project and I currently cannot update it using newer Construct versions.

Upload a project

testBug.zip

Steps to reproduce

1. Open the attached test project
2. Export for Android using Construct 3 r487
3. Run the build on a smartphone
4. Observe the white bar at the top or bottom of the screen
5. Export the exact same project using r476.4
6. Observe that the issue does not exist

Observed result

A white bar appears at the top or bottom edge of the screen on Android devices when exported from r487.

Expected result

The project should display correctly without any white bars, as it does in r476.4.

Affected platforms

Android

Affected browsers

Android WebView

Last unaffected release (including beta releases)

r476.4

First affected release (including beta releases)

r487

Additional remarks

This issue completely blocks me from updating my released Google Play project using newer Construct versions.

Platform information

Platform information
Product: Construct 3 r476 (stable)
Browser: Chrome 149.0.7827.103
Browser engine: Chromium
Context: browser
Operating system: Windows 11
Device type: desktop
Device pixel ratio: 1
Logical CPU cores: 16
Approx. device memory: 32 GB
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/149.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Language setting: en-US

Local storage
Storage quota (approx): 11 GB
Storage usage (approx): 593 MB (5.5%)
Persistent storage: No

Browser support notes
This list contains missing features that are not required, but could improve performance or user experience if supported.

Nothing is missing. Everything is OK!
WebGPU information
Renderer: WebGPU
Supports GPU profiling: yes
Major performance caveat: no
Maximum texture size: 16384
Adapter vendor: nvidia
Adapter architecture: blackwell
Adapter device: (unavailable)
Adapter description: (unavailable)
Adapter type: (unavailable)
Adapter backend: (unavailable)
Adapter features:

bgra8unorm-storage
clip-distances
core-features-and-limits
depth-clip-control
depth32float-stencil8
dual-source-blending
float32-blendable
float32-filterable
indirect-first-instance
primitive-index
rg11b10ufloat-renderable
shader-f16
subgroups
texture-component-swizzle
texture-compression-bc
texture-compression-bc-sliced-3d
texture-formats-tier1
texture-formats-tier2
timestamp-query
Audio information
System sample rate: 48000 Hz
Output channels: 2
Output interpretation: speakers
Supported decode formats:

WebM Opus (audio/webm;codecs=opus)
WebM Vorbis (audio/webm;codecs=vorbis)
MPEG-4 Opus (audio/mp4;codecs=opus)
MPEG-4 AAC (audio/mp4;codecs=mp4a.40.2)
MP3 (audio/mpeg)
FLAC (audio/flac)
PCM WAV (audio/wav;codecs=1)
Supported encode formats:

WebM Opus (audio/webm;codecs=opus)
MPEG-4 Opus (audio/mp4;codecs=opus)
MPEG-4 AAC (audio/mp4;codecs=mp4a.40.2)
Video information
Supported decode formats:

WebM AV1 (video/webm;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
WebM VP9 (video/webm;codecs=vp9)
WebM VP8 (video/webm;codecs=vp8)
MPEG-4 AV1 (video/mp4;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
MPEG-4 H.265 (video/mp4;codecs=hev1.1.2.L93.B0)
MPEG-4 H.264 (video/mp4;codecs=avc1.420034)
Supported encode formats:

WebM AV1 (video/webm;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
WebM VP9 (video/webm;codecs=vp9)
WebM VP8 (video/webm;codecs=vp8)
WebM H.264 (video/webm;codecs=avc1.420034)
MPEG-4 AV1 (video/mp4;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
MPEG-4 VP9 (video/mp4;codecs=vp9)
MPEG-4 H.265 (video/mp4;codecs=hev1.1.2.L93.B0)
MPEG-4 H.264 (video/mp4;codecs=avc1.420034)

[AshleyScirra]

This looks similar to the report in #9103 which should have been fixed in r486. Perhaps there's another case we missed - I'm guessing it's related to the upgrade to cordova-android@15 so it might be a bug in Cordova as well. We'll look in to it.

[AshleyScirra]

I can't reproduce this on an Android device here - it looks fine. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to deal with as I can't test myself if any particular change has fixed it. Can you provide the following information to help further investigation?

1. The specifications of the affected devices (model name, Android version)
2. If you change 'Orientations' to 'Any' and test again, does the issue go away if you change the orientation to landscape, then back to portrait?

[Danikcom]

I tested on three different Android devices. One of them is: Xiaomi 11 Lite 5g, android 14
I tested with Orientation set to "Any" and the issue still occurs.
I also tried switching to landscape and then back to portrait. The white bar is still present.

[Danikcom]

One more observation:

On older Android devices that use the classic 3-button navigation bar (Back, Home, Recent Apps), the white bar appears exactly in the navigation bar area at the bottom of the screen.

On devices with a camera cutout, punch-hole camera, or Dynamic Island-style area at the top of the display, the white bar appears in that top area.

[AshleyScirra]

Can you please provide the specification for all devices that exhibit the issue, in particular the Android version? It looks like you have three devices showing the issue, but as far as I can see you only mentioned the specification for one.

Do you have an Android 15+ device you can test to see if the issue reproduces there? I suspect this may be a bug in Cordova that may have already been fixed (see this PR: "When having cordova android in Edge To Edge the app does not extend to the full height of the device in version bellow Android 15"). However the fix is not yet in the latest Cordova version, so we will have to wait for them to publish an update to Cordova before we can update Construct. In the mean time you can keep using the previous version of Construct (r476.4).

[Danikcom]

Unfortunately, I do not have access to an Android 15+ device.

I found and reproduced the issue on the following devices:

1. Xiaomi 11 Lite 5g, android 14
2. Xiaomi Mi 8, android 10
3. Redmi 7a, android 9
4. Samsung Galaxy a51, android 13

[EMI-INDO]

@Danikcom

• I ask permission to use the c3p example you uploaded, to use in the plugin I just created.
  https://www.construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/plugin-sdk-10/new-addon-edgetoedge-scale-188519

[Danikcom]

@EMI-INDO Of course, feel free to use it in your plugin. Thanks for asking and for working on a solution!