Techunim: Android 13 will alert you when an app is draining your phone's battery in the background

Battery life has always been an issue with modern Android smartphones. Irrespective of how big a cell you pack in a device, rogue apps running in the background can drain its juice in no time. Google aims to resolve this issue in Android 13 with a new system notification to inform you about excessive background battery usage, as documentation that was added after the Android 13 DP 2 launch reveals.

The upcoming version of the OS will display a notification whenever an app drains excessive battery within 24 hours (via 9to5Google), irrespective of whether it targets the Android 13 SDK. Google notes the warning will not be shown when an app's foreground service is consuming a lot of battery until it is finished running or the user dismisses the notification — it will only be displayed if the high power consumption continues in the background after that. After the initial message, the warning won't be shown again until at least 24 hours later.

Android 13 will consider foreground services, work tasks, app cache, broadcast receivers, and background receivers to measure the battery impact. There are certain exemptions to this feature, which are as follows:

System apps and system-bound apps
Companion device apps
Apps running on a device in Demo Mode
Device owner apps
Profile owner apps
Persistent apps
VPN apps
Apps that have the ROLE_DIALER role
Apps that the user has explicitly designated to provide "unrestricted" functionality in system settings

Additionally, if Android 13 detects that an app is running a foreground service for at least 20 hours within a 24-hour window, the following notification will be shown: "APP is running in the background for a long time." Tapping this will open the Foreground Services Task Manager for you to take action on. This notification will only be shown for an app once within 30 days.

Google has been making underlying tweaks to Android for several years now to make it power efficient, including drastic changes to how background services work in Android 12, all to ensure your phone lasts longer on battery power. The company introduced some measures to help users find out who is the culprit when their battery is being drained in the background much earlier, with a persistent notification warning users as early as Android 8.0 Oreo. Android 13's approach seems to be a little less obnoxious, with its battery-draining notifications limited to showing up once every 24 hours.

If you want to give Android 13 a try yourself, we've got instructions for you on how to install the current developer preview on your supported Pixel phone, but be warned that as with any pre-stable software, you might run into issues and your phone could exhibit unexpected behavior. It's best to install it only when you have another spare phone you can run stable software on.