Google puts battery-killing Android apps on blast

Google has started to proactively warn Android users of apps that are liable to excessively drain their smartphone or tablet battery.

Users who browse to offending Play Store apps will now see a label on the download page advising it “may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.” Google will also remove these apps from “discovery surfaces” like recommendations, the company says.

The company explains on the Android developers blog (via 9to5Google): “In recognition that excessive battery drain is top of mind for Android users, Google has been taking significant steps to help developers build more power-efficient apps.

“On March 1st, 2026, Google Play Store began rolling out the wake lock technical quality treatments to improve battery drain. This treatment will roll out gradually to impacted apps over the following weeks. Apps that consistently exceed the “Excessive Partial Wake Lock” threshold in Android vitals may see tangible impacts on their store presence, including warnings on their store listing and exclusion from discovery surfaces such as recommendations.”

Google says that in its efforts to improve battery life Android-wide, the company has been studying offending partial wake locks they deem to be inefficient or unnecessary. Google goes on to say, the bad behaviour is defined as a “holding a non-exempted partial wake lock for at least two hours on average while the screen is off in more than 5% of user sessions in the past 28 days.”

Google says recommendations to app developers have already seen “measurable success” in the optimisation of background behaviour. However, there’s nothing like a seeing a big red warning on your Play Store page and the loss of easy discovery to whip the other developers into shape.