Google Play to Crack Down on Android Apps with High Battery Drain

Google has announced that it will be implementing new measures on the Google Play store to address Android apps that exhibit high background activity and cause excessive battery drain on devices.

Apps that surpass a certain threshold for “bad behavior” will be flagged on Google Play, potentially affecting their visibility and performance within the Android ecosystem.

Developers have until March 1, 2026, to update their apps to comply with a new core Android Vitals metric known as “excessive partial wake locks.”

The algorithm, which has been in beta since April 14, was developed by Google in collaboration with Samsung.

According to Google, this new metric is the first of many designed to provide developers with deeper insights into their app’s resource utilization, ultimately enhancing user experience across the Android ecosystem.

Apps that exceed the threshold for excessive wake locks may be labeled as battery drainers on Google Play and could face exclusion from prominent discovery surfaces.

Metrics Tracked by Google

Google Play’s Android vitals system will monitor partial wake locks, which refer to the total time an app spends on background tasks while the screen is off, preventing the device from entering sleep mode.

The measurement will be conducted per user session and across all sessions within a 28-day period, only counting non-exempt wake locks, such as those not system-held, related to audio playback, or initiated by the user.

An app will be deemed to exhibit excessive behavior if a single user session accumulates over two hours of non-exempt wake locks within 24 hours.

Google has set the bad-behavior threshold at 5% of an app’s user sessions over the past 28 days.

Developers exceeding this threshold will receive alerts on their Android vitals overview page.

This policy change aims to encourage developers to optimize their app’s behavior, reduce unnecessary wake locks, and pay close attention to wake locks initiated by external libraries and SDKs.

When asked about using this feature to detect spyware, adware, and malware that prevent devices from sleeping to maintain network connections, Google clarified that the metric primarily focuses on improving battery performance and technical quality rather than targeting malicious apps.

Google emphasized that the metric is intended to identify apps that excessively consume system resources without offering value to users, rather than specifically targeting malware.

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