Google to penalize “battery-hungry” Android apps — here’s why

Users of Android devices will soon begin receiving alerts about apps that excessively drain their batteries, as Google introduces stricter policies for so-called wake locks and launches a new performance metric aimed at improving battery life.

This was reported by Digital Trends.

What’s new

Google has announced the rollout of a new metric called "excessive partial wake locks," which has exited beta and is now available to developers in the Android Vitals console. According to the company, a user session is classified as "excessive" if an app holds un-released wake locks for more than two hours in a 24-hour period.

If an app crosses the "bad behavior threshold" — meaning 5% or more of its user sessions over the last 28 days are excessive — starting March 1, 2026, it will face sanctions. These include removal from prominent recommendation surfaces in Google Play and a red warning label on its store listing.

The metric was co-developed by Google and Samsung, combining Android platform data with the manufacturer’s "field" insights into device and battery performance. Developers are advised to adapt their apps to the new standards ahead of the March 1, 2026 deadline.

What wake locks are and why they matter

A wake lock is an Android mechanism that allows an app to keep a device "awake" (keeping the screen, CPU, or both active) even when the user isn’t directly interacting with it. While this is necessary in some cases — for example, when playing music with the screen off — improper implementation or abuse can lead to unnecessary power drain.

The update is designed to reduce such instances across the ecosystem: users will be more likely to see Google Play warnings about apps with "abnormal" background battery usage, and developers will be encouraged to optimize background behavior. Over time, this should improve battery life across nearly all Android smartphones, especially older or lower-powered models.

In the future, Google may expand Android Vitals with even more granular metrics to further strengthen app-quality filters in the Play Store.

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