Back in April 2025, Google introduced a new beta metric in Android Vitals called excessive partial wake locks that helps in identifying and addressing sources of battery drain. Now, after receiving positive feedback, the company has launched a new excessive partial wake locks metric for Android app developers.
The Android vital metric was co-developed with Samsung, combining their deep, real-world insights into user experience with battery consumption with Android’s platform data, while Google has used app developer input to make the algorithm even more accurate and representative. Google has defined a bad behavior threshold for excessive wake locks. You can check out the Google Play’s Core technical quality metrics below.
The company considers a user session excessive if it holds more than 2 cumulative hours of non-exempt wake locks in a 24-hour period. The bad behavior threshold is crossed when 5% of an app’s user sessions over the last 28 days are excessive. If an app exceeds this threshold, the developer will be alerted directly on their Android vitals overview page.
Starting March 1, 2026, if a title does not meet the quality threshold, Google may exclude the title from prominent discovery surfaces such as recommendations. In some cases, the company may also display a warning on the app’s store listing to indicate to users that the app may cause excessive battery drain.
