Google takes on battery-draining apps
In collaboration with Samsung, Google is stepping up its fight against apps that quietly destroy your battery life in the background. Starting March 1, 2026, the Play Store will begin flagging apps that cause excessive battery drain.As part of its latest technical quality guidelines, Google is adding new performance checks that zero in on something called wake locks – a mechanism that keeps your phone awake even when the screen’s off.
Now, wake locks aren’t bad by nature. They’re essential for things like playing music or downloading files in the background. But when developers don’t handle them right, they can turn into silent battery killers. Google says apps will be flagged if more than 5% of their user sessions in the past 28 days show excessive wake lock behavior.
Google will warn you if an app can drain your battery faster. | Image by Google
And it doesn’t stop there – apps that fail this new test could lose visibility in Play Store recommendations and get a public warning badge telling users their app “may drain your battery faster.” Ouch.
A new kind of Play Store ranking
This policy expands on Google’s existing technical quality metrics, which already track crashes, freezes, and other bad app behavior. Now, battery efficiency is officially part of that list – and honestly, it’s about time. Battery life is a huge deal for users. So seeing Google finally hold developers accountable for poor optimization feels like a real step forward. After all, smooth performance means nothing if your phone dies halfway through the day.
The message is clear: fix your app or get buried
If developers ignore this, their apps might not only get slapped with a warning but could also slip down in rankings or visibility. And let’s be real – who’s going to download an app that literally comes with a “battery drain” label next to it?
So yeah, developers have every reason to clean up their code if they want to stay in the game. And for users like us, that’s only good news.
