The Android app permissions that have the biggest impact on your battery life

Android apps must ask permission to access your photos, track your steps, read notifications, and more. Some permissions have a greater impact on your phone’s performance than others. There are three, in particular, that should not be granted willy-nilly.

There was a time when Android apps could access many things on your phone without needing to ask permission first. Those days are behind us, but frequent requests for permission can become easy to ignore. However, there are several reasons why you shouldn’t do this, and it’s not just about privacy and security.

A Brief Overview of Android Permissions

Let’s start with an overview of the most common permissions that Android apps can request. Here are the official descriptions from Google:

• Calendar: access your calendar.
• Call logs: Read and write your phone call log.
• Camera: Take photos and record videos.
• Contacts: Access your contacts.
• Files: Access all files on your device.
• Health, Well-being, Fitness (formerly “Body Sensors”): Access health data, records and sensor information about your vital signs.
• Location: Navigate to your device’s location.
• Microphone: Record sound.
• Music and audio: Access music and other audio files on your device.
• Nearby devices: Search, connect, and determine the relative position of nearby devices.
• Notifications: send notifications.
• Phone: Make and manage phone calls.
• Photos and videos: Access photos and videos on your device.
• Physical activity: Access your physical activity, like walking, cycling, driving, step count, etc.
• SMS: Send and check SMS messages.

These permissions are mainly used when an app tries to access something from your phone. There are other permissions related to an application’s behavior. While the permissions above are important, you won’t find the biggest battery offender on the list. So let’s dig a little deeper.

Which permissions have the most impact on battery life?

Most of the permissions listed above are for “on-demand” tasks. For example, when you send a photo to your friend, that’s when the “Photos & Videos” permission comes into play. However, it’s the permissions that often allow apps to constantly do something in the background that can drain your battery.

Location

You know that location permission is responsible for allowing an app to access the GPS location of your device. The nice thing is that there are several options for how much location access you want to allow. The problem is that people often give too much and battery life suffers.

First, there are two options for precision when an app requests location access: “Precise” and “Approximate.” The “Precise” option uses GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other sensors to pinpoint your exact location. All this work requires more power than the “Approximate” option, which relies solely on an Internet connection.

Apps will also ask you to decide how often they can retrieve your location. The “Allow all the time” option is the one that kills battery the most. Some apps legitimately need it, like Google Maps for navigation or a weather widget. However, many apps that require it don’t need it. In these cases, “Allow only when using the app” is your friend.

Nearby devices

Here’s a fun fact: Turning off Bluetooth doesn’t guarantee that apps still won’t search for nearby devices. This is where the cryptic permission called “Nearby Devices” comes in. Essentially, it allows applications to access devices that are physically nearby but not physically connected.

Wireless headphones are important, but they also include things like smart plugs, routers, fitness trackers, smart speakers, and more. You’ll probably be surprised how many apps on your phone have the Nearby Devices permission. These apps are allowed to constantly search for known and unknown devices to connect to. It doesn’t matter whether one of these devices is nearby or not: the scanning doesn’t stop.

Background activity

Some permissions don’t appear in the “Permissions Manager” and there is one in particular you should be aware of. Android apps are allowed to run in the background by default: this is what makes multitasking on Android work so well. However, you may not want every app on your phone to have this feature. Fortunately, you can delete it, which will essentially kill the app when you’re not using it.

Depending on your device, this process may be very different. On a Google Pixel and many other Android phones, go to Settings > Apps > Select an app. On the App Info page, scroll down and select “App battery usage.” There will be a toggle called “Allow background use” that you can turn off.

For Samsung Galaxy devices, you will need to go to Settings > Battery > Background usage limits > Deep sleep apps. Tap the “+” icon in the top corner and select the app you don’t want to run in the background. Galaxy phones will automatically put apps you haven’t used in a while on this list.

The difference in battery life after revoking these permissions will depend on how many apps were using them excessively. Even if you don’t notice a major change, it’s never a bad thing to take inventory of app permissions and make sure no one is going malicious. Just because an app asks for permission doesn’t mean you have to grant it.