Google has announced measures to identify and limit Android apps that significantly drain battery life through unnecessary background activities. The changes, tested since 2025-04-14, focus on enhancing battery performance.
Background Activity Criteria
The company will use a new metric, 'excessive partial wake locks', developed with Samsung, which measures how long apps keep devices awake when the screen is off. Apps involved in background activity exceeding standards may face visibility restrictions on Google Play Store and receive warnings.
- Wake locks over two hours in a session within 24 hours are deemed excessive.
- An app is problematic if over 5% of its sessions exceed limits in a 28-day period.
- System locks and user-initiated actions are exempt.
Developer Responsibilities
Developers must reduce background activity, review third-party components, and manage wake locks to comply with Google's guidelines. Notifications will appear on the Android Vitals dashboard to assist developers.
By 2026-03-01, developers need to address these battery usage issues to avoid warnings or a decrease in app discovery on the Play Store. This initiative aims to improve device battery performance and increase transparency in resource usage, without primarily targeting malware.
