(Credit: Google)
Google's Play Store will now flag apps that could cause excessive battery drain, which might make you think twice before downloading them—and encourage developers to fix the problem.
Google announced the feature last year, and it's now rolling out gradually to impacted apps. It targets excessive "wake locks," a feature Android developers can use to prevent a device from going to sleep.
"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," Alice Yuan, a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google, explained this week.
The warning, clearly labeled in a colorful box below the app's key details, reads, “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.”
(Credit: Google)How would an app break Android's new rules? Google says it's when it's “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.” An exempted wake lock is one that provides a clear user benefit, such as location access, audio playback, or a user-initiated data transfer.
It may take a while for these warnings to appear, with no user reports online yet. When they do, the data should be a good indicator of whether an app will be a problem on your phone.
Naming and shaming those developers may also encourage future improvements to remove the warning. Google is using this method to help developers optimize their apps, as no one wants their service to cause excessive battery drain.