What’s happened? Google is adding a flag in the Play Store to alert Wear OS smartwatch users of watch faces which have high battery drain.
- The new feature arrives with the version 47.7 update of Google’s Play Store, released on August 25, 2025.
- Google notes: “With this update, you can now find warning messages on detail pages for watch face apps that drain battery.”
This is important because: Many of today’s best smartwatches are packed with features, sensors, and useful apps, but even if you’re not an overly heavy user, there’s a good chance you’ll be recharging your wearable every day or two. Maximizing battery life on your smartwatch can help reduce the frequency of charging.
- Watch faces which feature lots of animations can be taxing on battery life, but before today there was no way of easily knowing just how power-hungry a face could be.
- Before this update, you would have to try out the watch face and keep a close eye on battery life. If you didn’t, you could find yourself out of battery before you have time to find a charger.
Why should I care? You can now easily see which watch faces are kinder on your smartwatch’s battery life, and select the best one for your needs, without fear of it zapping all your power.
- The change could prompt developers to up their watch face game as well, with those flagged as high-drain candidates likely to see a dip in downloads.
- In short, this move should lead to better quality, and more efficient watch faces going forward.
Okay, what’s next? Keep an eye out for software updates on your phone and smartwatch in the coming weeks, as the rollout heads to users around the world.
- This is great news if you have an older Wear OS, or you’ve recently picked up a newly announced wearable such as the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic or Google Pixel Watch 4 – as the new power drain indicator applies at a Play Store level, making it available to all compatible devices.
