5 Google Apps That Can Drain Your Battery Life

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Smartphones are increasingly featuring bigger and bigger batteries, with devices like the OnePlus 15 boasting a massive 7,300 mAh battery. But despite the much-welcomed jump in battery capacity to make our devices last longer, apps play a key role in your phone’s battery life. The apps you have running on your phone can make all the difference between it lasting for a day or two, or just a few hours. 

Sure, there are habits that drain your phone’s battery fast, but you also need to watch out for and steer clear of popular draining apps if you want to get more screen time from your device. The usual culprits known to run down your phone’s battery include social media apps like TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. However, even those innocent-looking apps from Google that you might have installed on your device could also be playing a big role in sucking your phone’s battery dry. 

Here are five Google apps that can drain your battery life, with some tips on how you can lower each app’s battery consumption. We’ve previously outlined the steps for checking which apps are using the most of your battery on Android and iOS, so we won’t rehash the same details here.

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Apps that play video are known to suck most of the battery life from smartphones, and YouTube falls under that category. The reason for YouTube’s high battery consumption is that it engages multiple components of your device simultaneously. Your Wi-Fi or mobile data is used continuously to download video’ from the app’s servers, and your screen is on at all times to display the video. Under the hood, your phone’s processor is also busy decoding. 

Playing videos in higher resolutions, such as 4K, also adds an extra strain to your phone’s battery life. With all these characteristics, that’s why it’s not uncommon to see users complain about YouTube draining their battery fast, whether on Android or iOS. To lower YouTube’s battery consumption, there are a number of things you can do. First, you need to turn off automatic playback of video previews.

If you’re using Android, open the app, tap your profile icon in the bottom-right, select the Settings icon in the top-right, then go to General > Playback in feeds and select Off. On iOS, tap your profile icon in the top-right, select Settings > Playback > Playback in feeds and select Off. You can also reduce YouTube’s battery drain on Android by opening the Settings app and selecting Apps > See all X apps > YouTube > App battery usage and turning off Allow background usage. The same can be done on iOS by going to Settings > Apps > YouTube and toggling off Background App Refresh.

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Google Chrome comes preinstalled on most Android phones, and is a good-enough browser that many people don’t care to seek alternatives. If you’re one of those who’ve settled for Google’s browser, then you should note that it can drain your battery life. One of the major features that makes Chrome a battery-draining app is background processes, where the browser sends or requests data from different servers. The browser also has a handful of convenience features baked in that, while useful, suck your battery life. 

Features such as page preloading, where Chrome loads certain pages ahead of time, and cross-device sync also add an extra strain to your battery. If you’re using Chrome on your laptop, there’s a dedicated Energy Saver mode that you can enable to extend your battery life. However, on mobile (either Android or iOS), there’s no such thing. Notwithstanding, you can reduce Chrome’s battery drain by tweaking a couple of things. 

On Android, you can disable Chrome’s background usage by going to Settings > Apps > See all X apps > Chrome > App battery usage and disabling Allow background usage. On iOS, you can achieve the same result by opening the Settings app and navigating to Apps > Chrome and toggling off Background App Refresh. To disable page preloading on Android, open Chrome, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right, then select Settings > Privacy and security > Preload pages and select No preloading.

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Google’s navigation app, Google Maps, is another option that can drain your battery life. As much as it’s handy to use if you’re in a new city, Google Maps won’t play nice with your battery because navigation apps are generally regarded as battery hogs. It constantly engages your phone’s GPS to keep track of your current location, uses your cellular data or Wi-Fi, and simultaneously keeps the screen on while you use it for turn-by-turn navigation. 

Google Maps is also packed with features like Live View and real-time traffic updates, and runs a bunch of processes in the background, all of which strain your phone’s battery. That’s why Google added Power Saving mode to Google Maps to help save the battery. Unfortunately, this mode is exclusive to the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold and is available in driving mode. If you have one of the supported devices, the feature is enabled by default, so you don’t need to toggle anything. 

However, you can activate it when driving by pressing your phone’s Power button. Another way to save battery while using Google Maps is to download maps offline, reduce the screen’s brightness, and disable background usage. To disable the app from running in the background on Android, open Settings and go to Apps > See all X apps > Maps > App battery usage, then toggle off Allow background usage. On iOS, go to Settings > Apps > Google Maps and disable Background App Refresh.

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Gmail, Google’s email app, can also drain your battery life. Processes like syncing your emails happen in the background, and that requires the app to connect to the internet using Wi-Fi or cellular data and engage your phone’s processor, which leads to battery use. For example, the app performs tasks like checking for new email messages in the background, which is why you get notifications about new emails almost immediately. 

Those push notifications also consume battery as they wake up your phone’s display. In case you didn’t already know, smartphone displays are a major contributor to battery drain, so Gmail constantly waking it up can affect how long your device lasts on a single charge. Now imagine just how much battery Gmail will use if you have multiple email accounts added that have to be constantly synced in the background to keep you updated. 

If you’d like to reduce Gmail’s battery use, you can start by limiting background usage. On Android, open Settings and navigate to Apps > See all X apps > Gmail > App battery usage and disable Allow background usage. If you use an iOS device, you can achieve the same by opening Settings > Apps > Gmail and toggling off Background App Refresh. Generally, disabling Background App Refresh is a simple yet effective way of extending your iPhone’s battery because it prevents an app from constantly fetching data in the background, which drains battery power.

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Google Home is another app capable of shortening your phone’s battery life. Speaking to ZDNet, Thomas Davy, CEO and co-founder of cloud optimization firm Cloud ExMachina, mentions smart home apps as one of the worst offenders in draining a smartphone’s battery. He notes that, like streaming apps, smart home apps have to continuously sync with the cloud, thus chewing through your iOS or Android phone’s battery. 

Google Home also has features that can drain the battery, like presence sensing, which uses your phone’s location to determine whether you’re at home to help start certain automations. And presence sensing requires your phone to grant the Google Home app permission to always access your location in order to work properly. By doing so, it can automatically tell when you’re at home or away and automatically adjust your smart home devices. This behavior can be taxing on your battery. 

To lower Google Home’s battery consumption, you can start by disabling location access. On Android, go to Settings > Apps > See all X apps > Home > Permissions > Location and select Don’t allow. On iOS, go to Settings > Apps > Google Home > Location, then tap Never. You can also restrict the app from running in the background by turning off Background App Refresh on iOS. On Android, you can select App battery usage in the app’s info page and disable Allow background usage.