Google plans a significant policy update for the Play Store to help users avoid battery-draining Android apps. Starting in 2026, the company will highlight apps that consume excessive power in the background and warn users when an app negatively affects battery life. Google aims to improve the overall Android experience by reducing unnecessary background activity across the ecosystem.
Developers must update their apps by March 1, 2026, to meet a new Android Vitals metric called “excessive partial wake locks.” Google and Samsung developed this metric together during a long beta-testing period. According to Google, this marks the beginning of a broader push to give developers clearer insights into how their apps use system resources.
How Google Will Measure Battery-Draining Android Apps
To identify battery-draining Android apps, Google will track partial wake locks—signals that keep a device awake even when the screen is off. These wake locks often cause hidden tasks to run, which drains the battery faster than users expect.
Google will measure:
- the total time an app holds partial wake locks
- how often wake locks occur across user sessions
- only non-exempt wake locks
System tasks, audio playback, and user-initiated file transfers will not count toward the metric.
An app becomes problematic when a single user session holds more than two hours of non-exempt wake locks within 24 hours. If this happens in over 5% of sessions within a 28-day period, Google will classify the app as a battery drainer.
What Happens When an App Violates Battery Rules
If an app consistently exceeds the thresholds, Google may:
- display warnings on its Play Store listing
- reduce its visibility in recommendations
- limit its exposure across key discovery surfaces
These changes push developers to optimize background behavior, release wake locks quickly, and review how external SDKs handle background tasks.
This System Isn’t Designed to Detect Malware
While many malicious apps also misuse wake locks, Google clarified that the new metric is not meant to detect spyware or adware. Instead, the company wants to improve overall device performance, saying the metric targets resource abuse regardless of intent.
“App security remains a priority,” Google explained. “However, this metric focuses on excessive system resource usage, not whether an app is malicious.”
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