The topic I found 5 hidden Android permissions that were destroying my battery life is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
Android’s battery settings tell you which apps consume the most battery life. But they don’t tell you why. Over the past few weeks, the same few apps kept showing up at the top of my list, which made sense because I open them dozens of times a day. Sitting right next to them were a weather app and a shopping app I barely use.
So I opened the Permission Manager to see what they had access to. The problem wasn’t the apps themselves. It was the permissions I granted them months ago and never revisited. Some were pulling location data or scanning constantly in the background. It’s the kind of drain that’s hard to pin on any single app. These are the five that were doing the most damage.
Location was the first permission I checked, and also the one I regretted not looking at sooner. The “Allow all the time” setting keeps GPS and network location running even when you’re not inside the app. On my phone, a food delivery app I’d opened maybe twice that month, a weather app, and a shopping app I had installed months earlier were all set this way.
Head to the Permission Manager on your phone and find Location. It sits one step inside Settings on most Androids, though Samsung tucks it under Security and privacy. Switch each app from Allow all the time to Allow only while using the app. Anything that genuinely needs it, like a fitness tracker, will ask when you open it. Within a couple of days, the weather and shopping apps had fallen off the top of my battery list.
These settings will instantly make your phone feel faster plus noticeably improve battery life.
Android has three battery settings for each app: Unrestricted, Optimized, and Restricted. Most problematic apps end up on Unrestricted, which has no guardrails. It lets an app wake the CPU and pull data freely, on its own schedule. Messaging apps, music players, fitness trackers, and sync utilities land here because they request it during setup, and most people just tap through and leave the default.
To check, open an app’s battery settings page. For apps that don’t require background activity, switching from Unrestricted to Optimized is enough. The app behaves the same; it just can’t run unchecked in the background. Restricted prevents an app from running in the background at all, which may delay notifications.
Samsung takes it further with Deep sleeping apps, under Background usage limits. It pauses the app entirely until you open it, which is great for apps you rarely use but don’t want to uninstall.
Sometimes turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth isn’t enough to actually stop them. Your phone keeps two scan settings running in the background by default, so apps with location permission can still track where you are. That’s why shopping apps, weather apps, and anything with “nearby” features keep tapping into it.
Both toggles sit under Location services in your phone’s Location settings. Switch them off unless you regularly use an app that needs to know your exact position inside a building, like an in-store navigation app or a smart home app pairing with a new device nearby. Maps and weather will keep working as usual.
The wake-word listener for Google Assistant or Bixby runs constantly. That’s by design. But I hadn’t thought about the other apps I’d given mic access to months earlier. A sleep tracker and a fitness app I hadn’t opened in weeks were both still listening.
Open the Permission Manager and go to Microphone. For any app that doesn’t need your voice, set access to Don’t allow or Ask every time. Android’s Privacy dashboard also shows which apps accessed the mic in the last 24 hours, and that’s the fastest way to catch anything you didn’t realize had permission. If you rarely use a voice assistant, turning off Hey Google or the Bixby wake phrase stops the constant listening entirely.
I almost skipped this one, assuming it was only relevant for fitness apps. But when I opened Physical activity in the Permission Manager, two apps that had nothing to do with fitness were on the list: a maps app and a caller ID tool, both reading motion data for features I’d never actually used.
Fitness apps legitimately need this for step counts and workout detection, but the permission is also requested by map apps, insurance apps, and caller ID tools for background features you may not know are running.
In the Permission Manager, tap on Physical activity. Revoke it for any app that isn’t directly tracking your steps or workouts. Google Fit, Samsung Health, or whichever fitness tracker you use will keep running as usual. All that stops is the passive tracking by apps that never really needed it.
After a few months of blaming the battery itself, going through these settings took less than twenty minutes and made a bigger difference than anything else I’d tried. The top of my battery list now matches the apps I actually use every day, not the ones running off permissions I’d forgotten I’d given.
Worth revisiting every couple of months, especially after installing new apps. Permissions stack up quietly, and the battery stats rarely give you enough to trace it back.
