Google Play services is draining the battery on Android: Fix

Google Play Services is like the blast furnace that powers many of your phone’s apps and functions. It’s an API package that essentially allows your phone’s applications to communicate with each other, as well as with things like your GPS, to give you relevant location information. It is very important, in other words, but if it starts to drain your battery, that’s a problem.

Google Play Services battery drain is, to some extent, a misnomer, because it is often caused by external apps and functions using features like location, metrics, Wi-Fi, etc., which are handled by Services.

Use of these features ends up being reflected in battery usage for the Services. We have put together a ton of solutions that should help you fix battery drain and get Play Services working fine again.

How to detect battery consumption of Google Play services on Android

The good news is that to detect if Google Play Services is draining your Android device’s battery, you don’t need to install another app. It’s as easy as accessing your device’s settings and tapping “Applications and Notifications.”

Then tap on “See all apps xx”, scroll down to “Google Play services” and tap on that.

Tap ‘Advanced’, then take a look to see what it says under ‘Battery’.

What percentage of the battery has been used since the last full charge? If you are using more than a small percentage of your battery (that is, if it is going to be double digits) then it is too high and you need to take action to fix the problem.

Find the REAL source of battery drain

But here’s a bit more than meets the eye, because Google Play Services itself doesn’t drain the battery. As we mentioned earlier, it’s really other apps that communicate with Google Play services – location access, Wi-Fi, data, and background running – that are causing the drain.

So once you see that Google Play Services is draining your battery, the first port of call should be to see which apps are actually draining your battery.

There are several apps for this purpose, one of the best being BetterBatteryStats . It will cost you a couple of bucks, but it will give you the most detailed information about which apps and processes are causing the battery drain. You can then uninstall those apps or remove their permissions as you see fit.

An alternative is Greenify , which has a free basic version.

Clear cache and data from Google Play services

The first thing you should try is clearing your Google Play Services cache, which may have been bloated with an excess of unnecessary information causing you stress.

To do this, go to “Settings -> Applications and notifications -> Google Play services -> Storage -> Clear cache”.

If you’re still suffering from battery drain, the most radical step is to clear your Google Play Services data, which will require you to log back into your Google account afterward.

To do this, go to “Settings -> Applications and notifications -> Google Play services -> Storage -> Clear storage -> Clear all data”.

Fix battery drain of Google Play services by turning off automatic syncing

If you have more than one account connected to Google Play Services, that could explain the battery drain problem. Since Google Play Services has to search your location for new events in your area, emails, notifications, and more, it runs continuously in the background. So that’s even more memory.

You can fix this problem by turning off automatic syncing for multiple accounts, like your email, Calendar, and Drive, as well as third-party apps like WhatsApp. To do this, go to “Settings -> Accounts”, then touch each account to see if syncing is on or off.

If it says “Sync On”, tap “Account Sync” to access that app and control the various sync options for that app. Obviously, if automatic syncing is very important to you for a certain app, leave it on and try turning off automatic syncing in less important apps first.

Synchronization errors could be to blame

Whenever Google Play Services tries to sync data but can’t, you obviously get sync errors. These errors can also be the reason why you have to charge your phone more than before. Take a look at your contacts, calendar, and Gmail account and see if you can spot any errors. Try to remove any emojis that you may have in any contact as Google doesn’t like that.

You can also try removing and re-adding accounts to try to correct those sync errors. Turning off mobile data in your device settings for a little over a minute can help too, but remember to turn it back on.

An application requests your location

There are many applications that will ask for your location. The problem is that when they do, they request it through Google Play Services, which then uses their GPS to get that information.

Open the apps that ask for your location and turn off the location permission. You can do this by going to your device’s Settings -> Applications and notifications -> [App name] -> Permissions.

Once there, tap the ‘Location’ slider to turn off location syncing, which can reduce battery usage for Play Services.

Uninstall updates from Google Play services

This may sound a bit strange, but sometimes updates will fail. For this reason, if you experience battery drain due to Google Play services, you can try uninstalling updates from this service. To do this, go to “Settings -> Applications and notifications”. Then select “Google Play Services” from the list of applications. Select the hamburger menu and then select “Uninstall updates.”

Restart your phone and see if that makes a difference.

Install updates from Google Play services

This probably sounds weird too, although bear with me. If there is a version of Google Play Services causing battery drain issues, there may already be an update that can fix your issues when you realize what’s going on. Go to the Google Play Store and check for available updates for Google Play Services. Restart your phone and monitor battery performance to see if anything changes.

Ending

If you are still having trouble and want to try to isolate why Google Play Services is misbehaving, you can try starting your Android device in safe mode. You can also check out our guide on how to stop running Android apps in the background.