Many apps crashing on phone after Google app disabled and re-enabled The Google app was taking up half a gigabyte of storage even though I never use it, so I cleared its data and disabled it. After I did this, Gmail and Outlook crashed, so I re-enabled the main Google app. Gmail and Outlook were still failing, however.
Since the main Google app was now an earlier version, I thought maybe I should update it. Although I can open the main Google app, it crashes as soon as I switch to the &quot;Update&quot; tab, so that's not an option. I also tried clearing my Gmail and Outlook data to see if that would help, as well as disabling and re-enabling Gmail, but neither had any effect.
I've also cleared all data from Google Play Services and restarted my phone to no avail. If I try to visit Google settings from the Settings app, then the Settings app freezes. What can I do to make these apps operable again? Note that not all Google apps are afflicted. For example, I can still use Drive, YouTube, and the Play Store.
For a little more detail, the Gmail is receiving data. I can see new messages for the half-second that the app is open before  it crashes. If I try to send a crash report, the crash-report-sending services crashes too.
I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge running Android 8.0.0.
EDIT:
Previously I wrote of only a few apps that have crashed. As I have tried to use more, I have found that apps unrelated to Google have crashed -Stack Exchange being one of them, as well as an open source reader app (that wasn't even installed through the Play Store, it was installed through F-Droid), a game, and the built-in Samsung text messenger app.
In recent verbal conversation, someone suggested that I may have unintentionally deleted a security token, and that is causing the widespread malfunctions. However, he does not know how to get a new one if that is the case, and of course neither do I.
EDIT 2:
In the early afternoon today, about 24 hours after the initial problem, the main Google app managed to update itself without any intervention from me and everything came back online. Perhaps there is a 24-hour check for updates that Google performs for built-in apps automatically outside.of the app store. In any case, once this occurred, the other apps which had been compromised began to function as well, so now everything is back to normal.
First, instead of a few dozen little apps, each supplying an API or a service, Google changed the scheme (a few years ago) to incorporate all of them in one app.  Most Google apps depend on it, many non-Google apps depend on it.
I'd try uninstalling all the non-system apps that are crashing (you can't uninstall a system app unless the device is rooted), update the Google app (again), update the Google system apps and reinstall all the uninstalled apps.  (If that doesn't work, reflashing the ROM - and losing anything not backed up - may be your only resort.)