Battery hogs are on notice! Google will penalize apps that consume a lot of battery

Google is finally starting to address a problem that has plagued Android for years: apps that secretly drain battery life. Starting March 1, 2026, apps that keep phones awake for too long without good reason will face penalties in the Play Store. The new rules were developed in collaboration with Samsung and are intended to force developers to pay attention to how their apps handle power.

What are wake locks and why are they a problem

A wake lock is a technical feature that prevents your phone from going to sleep, even when the screen is off. In practice, this means that an app keeps the processor active and can perform work in the background. This is useful when you’re listening to music via Spotify or downloading a large file – you don’t want the phone to go to sleep and interrupt it.

The problem arises when an app holds a wake lock unnecessarily long. For example, a poorly written weather app that, instead of checking the temperature once an hour and then shutting down, keeps the processor awake all night. Or a social network that constantly loads new posts, even if you’re not interested at all.

For the average user, this is invisible. You open your phone in the morning and find you have 20% battery instead of 80%, and you have no idea why. Sometimes you find out in the battery settings, but mostly you just see that “app XY consumed 40% of the battery,” and you don’t know if that’s normal or not.

What the Penalties Will Be

Google is introducing a new metric into Android vitals, a system that monitors the technical quality of apps. The new metric is called “excessive partial wake locks” and measures how much an app keeps the phone awake.

If an app exceeds the set limit, it will face several issues:

• Lower visibility in the Play Store – the app will stop appearing in recommendations and prominent placements
• Warning label – a notification will be displayed to users on the app’s page stating that “this app may cause faster battery drain”

Google notes that the exact wording and design of the warning may still change, but the principle will remain – users will see that they need to be careful. In practice, this means that if you are choosing between two similar apps and one has a warning label and the other does not, you will likely choose the one without the label.

Where is the Limit

Google has set the threshold at 2 hours of cumulative wake locks within 24 hours. This does not mean that an app holds a wake lock for two continuous hours – it can hold hundreds of shorter ones, but the total sum must not exceed two hours.

It’s important to note that not all wake locks are counted. Google exempts so-called “system held wake locks”, which are wake locks that provide a clear benefit to the user and cannot be further optimized. These include:

• Audio playback – if you are listening to music or a podcast, it is logical for the app to keep the phone awake
• User-initiated data downloads – when you download a movie to Netflix or a large game, the app needs to hold a wake lock

An app will run into problems if 5% of its user sessions over the last 28 days exceed that two-hour limit. This means that if you have a million users and 50,000 of them experience high battery consumption due to your app, you will receive a penalty.

For wearables (watches, fitness trackers), Google has an even stricter rule: an app must not consume more than 4.44% of battery per hour during active sessions.

What This Means for Users

For average users, this means that the Play Store will provide more warnings about apps that drain battery. If you download a new app and see a warning label, you have a clear signal that you should look elsewhere.

On the other hand, this doesn’t mean all problems will disappear. Many apps have legitimate reasons to hold a wake lock for a long time – such as navigation, fitness tracking, or sleep monitoring apps. And some apps simply need to run in the background, even if it consumes energy.

The question is whether developers will truly start optimizing their apps, or if they will simply accept the penalty and rely on their user base being large enough to withstand it. For smaller developers, this is an existential problem – if Google hides you from recommendations, you will struggle to acquire new users.

In any case, it’s a step in the right direction. Battery life is one of the most important factors when using a phone, and if Google finally starts pushing developers towards better optimization, it could have a real impact on the daily use of Android phones.

Do apps that drain your battery bother you?

Source: Android Developers Blog