Google Play is rolling out a new feature that flags apps prone to heavy battery drain, giving users a heads-up before they hit download and putting pressure on developers to optimize their apps. First announced last year, the update gradually applies to affected apps and focuses on excessive “wake locks,” a tool developers use to keep devices awake.
Alice Yuan, a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google, explained this week, “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.”
Apps that trigger Google Play’s new battery alert will display a warning in a colorful box beneath the app’s key details: “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.”
So, how does an app break Android’s rules? Google says it happens when an app is “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.” Wake locks that give a clear benefit to the user, like location access, playing audio, or a user-started data transfer are allowed.
These warnings may take time to show up, and so far there are no user reports online. Once they appear, though, they’ll give a reliable indication of whether an app could drain your battery.
By publicly flagging these apps, Google hopes to nudge developers into fixing the issues. The move is designed to help developers optimize their apps, since no one wants their service to be a battery drain.
