Google Play Store Wants to Help Save Battery Life
If there’s one thing all smartphone owners have in common, it’s that our devices rarely have enough battery life . Some phones perform better than others, especially when paired with power-saving settings , but overall, we all fear that our phone might die before we can reach the charger.
There are many reasons why your smartphone’s battery might drain quickly, but the most likely culprits are poorly designed apps. Some of these apps consume too much processing power when actively used, while others run unnecessarily in the background. You can always check your device’s battery statistics to see which apps are draining the most. But what if you know an app is draining your battery before you even download it?
New battery alerts in the Play Store
Starting March 1, 2026 , this will become the new reality . In just a few months, when you open an app in the Play Store, you might see a new notification that wasn’t there before. Beneath the usual information, such as the app name, developer, reviews, and rating, you’ll see a red warning that says something like, “This app may consume more battery than expected due to high background activity.” I don’t know about you, but I’d think twice before downloading it.
According to the Android Developer Blog , work on this was already underway. Earlier this year, the company, in collaboration with Samsung, launched a beta version of a new metric called “excessive partial wake locks,” which was intended to alert developers when their apps were waking the display “excessively.” Following this beta test, Google announced that it had improved the algorithm for calculating this metric and has now made it available to all developers.
Going forward, if an app activates its screen for a total of two hours in any 24-hour period, Google will consider it excessive. If 5% of an app’s user sessions are excessive over a 28-day period, it exceeds the “bad behavior threshold.” This could have a number of consequences for the app: Google may first remove it from Play Store search results. This could significantly impact the app’s overall install rate, as users won’t be able to find it without searching for it directly. Of course, Google could also add the aforementioned battery warning to the app’s Play Store page, which would also discourage users from downloading it.
Now app developers must fix this “bad behavior” in their apps by March next year. Hopefully, all battery issues on your smartphone will be resolved in the coming months, but if not, keep an eye on the app’s Play Store page for updates. If you see this warning, you may want to uninstall the app entirely.
This isn’t the first time the Play Store has launched a malicious app removal feature. Last year, the store launched real-time threat detection to identify apps that could distribute malware. The Play Store also tested alerts that would warn about apps that are frequently uninstalled or have significantly fewer active users than competitors.