Google Play Store Starts Warning Users About Android Apps That Cause Excessive Battery Drain

Google started taking measures against Android apps that cause excessive battery drain. The tech giant announced that the Google Play Store began displaying warning labels on apps that consume battery life on Android smartphones. Affected apps will be excluded from Play Store recommendations. The company notes that affected apps misuse Android's partial wake lock mechanism and make the CPU run in the background even when the screen is off. Google defines the bad behaviour threshold as when "more than 5 percent of user sessions in the past 28 days.

Google Shows Play Store's New Warning Labels

In a recent blog post, Google announced that the Google Play Store started rolling out the wake lock technical quality treatments to improve battery drain starting on March 1. This will be gradually rolled out to impacted apps over the following weeks. The company confirmed that apps that consistently exceed the "Excessive Partial Wake Lock" threshold in Android vitals will be listed on the Play Store with warnings. They will be excluded from the discovery surfaces, such as recommendations.

Photo Credit: Google

The company has shared an image showing the example of the warning message, which reads: “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity".

Partial wake locks allow apps to keep CPU of a smartphone active even when the screen is off. This functionality often causes increased battery consumption. Google considers an app in "bad behaviour threshold" when it keeps a partial wake lock active for an average of two hours or more while the phone's screen is off in over 5 percent of user sessions during the past 28 days.

It's worth noting that smartphones running on Android allow some wake locks, if they provide clear user benefits and cannot be optimised further, such as for audio playback, location services, or when a user starts a data transfer.

In the blog, Google has recommended a few solutions for developers for use cases like background syncs, location tracking, sensor monitoring and network communication to reduce unnecessary wake lock usage. The company added that some apps like Whoop have already begun addressing the issue and leveraged its recommendations to optimise their background behaviour.