After Gboard crashed, some Android users were locked out of their phones.

Gboard is Google's keyboard app, available to both Android and iOS users. Complaints posted this week on Android help pages (Reddit and Twitter(via 9to5Google)) revealed that Android users had significant issues with the app. An error caused the virtual QWERTY keyboard to crash, and some users locked it out of their devices because they couldn't type in a password or PIN. The culprit is an update Google rolled out a few days ago for Gboard.

It is reported that the most affected are Motorola's Android phones. A tweet from Motorola directly blamed Google for the error, saying: "This issue is caused by an update to Gboard that belongs to Google. If Gboard can't access its device because it won't boot, the only unfortunate way around screen lock is to perform an external reset. "Naturally, the idea that the device must be restored to factory settings brought many Android users to the bathroom. Fortunately, there is a solution that does not require users to wipe their phones. Go to Settings Pad Clear Data and Clear Cache.

If you can unlock your phone, you may want to consider using a third-party virtual QWERTY app, such as SwiftKey, until Google releases an update (see below for more information). SwiftKey can be installed from Google Play Store. Another idea is to use a mode instead of a PIN or password to unlock the device, as the mode allows access to the phone without using the keyboard.

There have been conflicting reports about whether Google has released an update to eliminate this bug, but given the severity of the problem, we wouldn't be surprised if people start rolling out this product.