473/68 Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Google is preparing to enforce stricter Play Store policies targeting Android apps that run excessively in the background and drain battery life, using a new metric called “Excessive Partial Wake Locks,” developed in collaboration with Samsung. Apps that exhibit such behavior may face reduced visibility in Play Store recommendations or receive warning labels on their app pages. Developers must ensure their apps comply with the new standards by March 1, 2026.
Android Vitals will monitor how long an app keeps the device awake while the screen is off. If an app holds a partial wake lock for more than 2 hours within a 24-hour period-except for legitimate use cases like music playback or user-initiated data transfers-it will be flagged as excessive. If such behavior occurs in more than 5% of all app sessions over a 28-day period, the app will trigger warnings and may be subject to Play Store quality penalties.
This policy aims to encourage developers to optimize resource management, including the use of third-party SDKs, in order to reduce unnecessary battery consumption. Google emphasized that the new standard is intended to improve app quality and performance, not to detect malware, spyware, or adware-even though such harmful software often uses similar techniques to prevent devices from entering sleep mode.
