Google to flag Android apps with excessive battery use on the Play Store

Google Play will begin enforcing a new Android Vitals metric, “excessive partial wake locks,” to flag apps that hold non-exempt wake locks and cause battery drain; apps exceeding thresholds (more than two cumulative hours per user session within 24 hours and affecting >5% of sessions over 28 days) may be flagged or deprioritized, and developers must comply by March 1, 2026. The metric measures background wake lock time across a 28-day window and is intended to improve battery performance rather than to serve as a malware detection mechanism.