Google Play is cracking down on battery draining Android apps

Battery life is still one of the biggest pain points for smartphone owners, and much of that frustration comes from apps that quietly keep your phone awake when you are not using it. Google is about to address that more aggressively.

Starting March 1, 2026, the Google Play Store will begin showing clear alerts on app pages when an app is known to drain your battery faster than it should because of excessive background activity.

The company detailed this change in a recent blog post, where it introduced a new quality signal called the excessive partial wake lock metric. This metric, developed together with Samsung and tested in beta earlier in the year, is now available to all Android developers. Its goal is simple but powerful: measure when apps abuse Android wake locks and keep devices awake for far longer than is reasonable.

On Android, a wake lock is a mechanism an app can use to stop the device from fully going to sleep so it can finish tasks like syncing data, checking messages or uploading files. Partial wake locks are the most subtle form; the screen can be off, but the processor stays busy in the background. Used sparingly, this is essential for a good real time experience. Used carelessly, it turns into an invisible battery drain that users cannot easily spot.

Google is now quantifying this behaviour with a strict time based rule. According to the new guidelines, an app crosses the technical limit if it holds more than two hours of non exempt wake locks within any 24 hour period. Non exempt here means background work that is not obviously essential to the user experience. Critical tasks like audio playback or important data transfers are treated as exempt, so they do not count against the app even if they legitimately need to run for longer.

However, a single outlier device is not enough to get an app into trouble. Google has defined what it calls a bad behavior threshold. An app is only considered problematic if at least 5 percent of its user sessions show excessive wake locks over a rolling 28 day window. In other words, Google looks for consistent patterns of abuse across a meaningful portion of the user base, not just a few rare edge cases or misconfigurations.

Once an app crosses that bad behavior threshold, the consequences move from purely technical metrics into visible store level penalties. The Play Store may start excluding that app from certain recommendations and curated lists, reducing its chances of being discovered by new users. More importantly for everyday people scrolling through the store, Google can display a warning on the app listing that explicitly notes the potential for faster battery drain due to background activity.

For developers, this turns battery friendliness into a first class ranking signal, not just a nice to have optimisation. Teams will be pushed to audit their background services, scheduled tasks and analytics jobs to ensure they are not holding wake locks longer than necessary. Modern Android tools already provide profiling data for battery usage, but this new metric gives developers a clear target and a direct business incentive, because falling below the threshold protects both their reputation and their visibility on Google Play.

For users, the change means more transparency and fewer surprises. Instead of wondering why a brand new game or social app made their phone hot and drained 30 percent of the battery while it sat in a pocket, they will see clear hints before installing that the app has a history of aggressive background behaviour. That information can steer people toward better optimised alternatives and help them keep older phones usable for longer.

On a broader level, the excessive partial wake lock metric signals a shift in how the Android ecosystem treats quality. Beyond privacy labels, data safety sections and permission reminders, battery impact is becoming a visible part of an app profile. By turning hidden background patterns into a scored signal that affects both rankings and warnings, Google and its partners like Samsung are nudging the entire ecosystem toward leaner, more respectful use of system resources. In the long run, that should translate into phones that last longer through the day, fewer unexpected shutdowns and a healthier relationship between users and the apps they rely on.