Overview
- The rollout began March 1 and will expand gradually over the coming weeks to apps that exceed the battery drain threshold.
- Listings for affected apps display the notice: “this app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.”
- Apps that consistently violate the threshold risk reduced visibility in recommendations along with the on-page warning.
- Android vitals now surfaces a wake lock metric that flags sessions with more than two hours of non‑exempt background wake time in a 24‑hour period.
- Exemptions apply for clear user benefits such as audio playback, location services, or user‑initiated data transfers, and a WHOOP case study shows a 90%+ reduction after fixes guided by these insights.