Google has found a new way to shame battery-hogging apps before you even install them
by Ben Khalesi · Android PoliceAndroid users are so used to weird battery drains that we barely question them anymore.
We buy power banks, assume our phones are getting old, or tell ourselves we’ve been on them too much. Sure, sometimes hardware really is the problem.
Other times, the problem is software running in the background and refusing to let the phone sleep. It looks like Google doesn’t want to keep taking the heat for that.
As of March 1, 2026, the Play Store can warn users when an app causes higher battery drain due to excessive background activity, and that’s a change worth paying attention to.
Related
How to check battery health on your Android phone
Phone running out of juice too soon? Check your battery health
Partial wake locks are useful until they are not
Your phone’s battery can only store a limited amount of energy, so Android is always trying to stretch it as far as it can.
When you press the power button and the screen shuts off, the system moves into a low-power suspend mode.
But some apps still need the CPU to stay on even when the screen is off. That’s why Android developers use the PowerManager API.
They can set a PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK flag to tell the operating system to keep the system running.
The problem starts when apps hold partial wake locks longer than needed or fail to release them after the work is done.
Because the screen is off, you get no sign that the phone is still doing something in the background, and you only notice there’s a problem when you come back to a dead phone.
That’s the sloppy coding Google is now going after.
Google now knows when an app is wasting power
Google introduced the metric in beta earlier in 2025 and developed it in collaboration with Samsung.
They used usage data to create a threshold system that identifies when an app starts draining the battery for no good reason.
So what actually counts as bad behavior? Android flags an app if it holds a non-exempt partial wake lock for more than two total hours in a 24-hour period while the screen is off.
But one bad day won’t get an app penalized. That only happens when the same pattern shows up in more than 5% of user sessions, averaged over 28 days.
Google is starting to treat battery efficiency as a core measure of app quality.
Before, app quality mostly came down to stability. Did it crash? Did it lock up? Now, excessive battery drain is being put in that same category.
The system has exemptions for features that genuinely need continuous CPU access. When an app is doing something the user asked for and benefits from, Google gives room to do that.
Audio playback is an obvious example. If you’re listening to an album on Spotify, the app has to keep the device awake, so that battery use doesn’t count against it.
Active location tracking gets the same treatment. If you order food, the app needs to keep up with the driver.
It also applies to User-Initiated Data Transfers. If you tap to download a big movie for offline viewing, the app can keep the CPU awake until the download is done.
A Play Store warning label could kill an app’s first impression
Google set this up as a two-part system aimed at two pressure points. Getting new users and protecting an app’s reputation.
Starting with the public-facing penalty, apps that fail the battery test may get a warning label on their Play Store page.
Think about what that label does in the moment. You search for a new app, open the listing, and Google is telling you the app could drain your battery.
Subscribe for Play Store battery insights and analysis
Get the newsletter for clear, actionable coverage of Google's new Play Store battery warnings: how wake-lock misuse is identified, which app behaviors get flagged, and what this means for app discovery and developer practices, plus related platform policy analysis.
Get Updates
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Most people won’t sit there and debate it. They’ll back out and download something else.
Someone hooked on Instagram will install it anyway, warning or not. But a smaller independent app doesn’t have that kind of pull.
Battery-draining apps could lose the spotlight
The warning label is the lesser of two punishments.
Google can also bury these apps in the Play Store. Battery-draining apps may be pulled from the store’s main discovery surfaces, like recommendations and Similar Apps.
Companies spend huge amounts on App Store Optimization to rank better for broad searches.
You can have a great icon, polished metadata, and a serious marketing budget, but none of that helps much if your code is lazy. That is how you force developers to change.