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Google Makes Excessive Wake Lock Metric Core to Android Vitals With 2026 Play Enforcement

Apps will be flagged based on sessions exceeding two hours of non‑exempt wake locks with a 5% threshold over 28 days.

Overview

  • The metric is now generally available in Android vitals and joins crash rate, ANR rate, and excessive battery usage as a core technical quality bar that affects Play visibility.
  • Enforcement begins March 1, 2026, with titles over the threshold potentially removed from prominent discovery surfaces and, in some cases, shown a battery‑drain warning on their Play Store listing.
  • An excessive session is defined as more than two cumulative hours of non‑exempt partial wake locks in a 24‑hour period, with system‑held cases such as audio playback or user‑initiated data transfers exempt.
  • Apps cross the bad‑behavior threshold when 5% of user sessions in the past 28 days are excessive, which will trigger alerts in Android vitals.
  • Android vitals now provides a wake lock names table with P90 and P99 durations to pinpoint long‑running tags, and Google recommends investigating tags whose P90 or P99 exceed 60 minutes; the metric was co‑developed with Samsung and refined during beta.