Google to warn about power-hungry apps in Play Store

In April of this year, Google introduced the metric “Excessive partial wake locks” (excessive partial wake locks) as a beta in Android Vitals. Now the “refined metric” has left beta status and, according to Google's announcement, is a permanent component of the Core Vitals metric. It is therefore generally available to all developers in “Android Vitals”.

According to Google, the beta of the metric was developed in collaboration with Samsung and “combines their well-founded, practical insights into user experience with battery consumption with Android's platform data.” Wake locks are system-level functions that essentially keep the smartphone “awake” even when it should be idle. These “watchdogs” are used by some apps for perfectly legitimate reasons—for example, to play music or podcasts or for location tracking. However, the wake-lock function can also be misused and severely impact battery life.

New Wake Lock Limits

As Google explains, a new threshold for impermissible behavior with excessive wake locks that “contribute significantly to battery consumption” has been defined. A user session is now considered excessive “if it has more than 2 cumulative hours of non-exempt wake locks within a 24-hour period.” Exempted, however, are system-held wake locks that “offer clear benefits to the user” and cannot be further optimized. Google cites audio playback or user-initiated data transfer as examples.

Google further explains that the “threshold for impermissible behavior” is exceeded if 5 percent of an app's user sessions have been excessive in the past 28 days. If an app exceeds this threshold, developers will be notified directly on their Android Vitals overview page.

Google warns developers that their apps will be excluded from “prominent areas such as recommendations” in the Play Store if an “excessive exceeding of the threshold for impermissible behavior due to excessive wake locks” is detected.

In addition, corresponding apps can be marked with a red warning in the Play Store, informing users of high battery consumption: “This app may use more battery power than expected due to high background activity,” is the approximate wording. Developers have until March 1, 2026, to optimize their apps before the announced store consequences take effect.

(afl)