My theory on which app kills my phone battery the most has always been Facebook, until more recently when I figured it was more TikTok or Instagram. I went hunting for the real problem on my Pixel 9 running Android 17 and the results didn’t match my assumptions. First of all, I was looking for background app refresh, which was the wrong term to even use.
Android doesn’t actually have “background app refresh”
The setting everyone means isn’t the setting that exists
Background App Refresh is more of an iPhone term. Android’s equivalent — and what we all mean when we say it — is scattered across a per-app menu that most people never open past the surface level.
Head to Settings > Apps > [app] > App battery usage, and you’ll see a single toggle labeled Allow background usage, with a note that reads “Enable for real-time updates, disable to save battery.”
I figured that toggle was the whole story, but it turns out there’s more to it. When you have the toggle set to ON, tap directly on the words “Allow background usage” (not the switch itself) and you’ll see two more options: Optimized and Unrestricted. The former is what Google recommends for most apps, while the latter allows full background activity at the cost of more battery.
Turn the top toggle off entirely, and both of those choices disappear; you’ll essentially set that app to Restricted, which the Android Developers documentation describes as fully preventing an app from running in the background, though those apps may not work as expected.
The Optimized default isn’t one fixed state, either. Android also sorts every app into a standby bucket, Active, Working Set, Frequent, or Rare, based on how often you actually open it, and that bucket determines how much background access an Optimized app gets on any given day, according to Android’s own power management documentation. An app you touch constantly gets a longer leash. An app you open once a month gets throttled automatically, with no toggle involved at all. That’s likely part of why Chrome, something I use every day, showed up with real background time tied to real use, while Slack and Messenger, apps I barely open on this phone, stayed under 1% without me touching a setting for either one.
If you open a restricted app, Android will treat it as unrestricted for as long as you’re using it, then will snap it back to restricted when you switch away from the app again. The system is doing more negotiating with this setting than a single toggle implies.
What my Pixel 9 actually showed
The obvious suspects weren’t even in the running
I checked Settings > Battery > Battery usage expecting Facebook, Instagram, or Netflix to top the list. None of them showed up. Google Photos was background-active for 2 hours and 40 minutes against just 4 minutes of screen time, and the Google app itself logged over 2 hours in the background with under a minute on screen. Both are doing work I want: photo backup and Assistant services. Restricting either would have solved nothing and broken something.
Chrome, Fing, and the Play Store rounded out the list, each tied the time I actually spent using them. Chrome alone accounted for 23% of total battery draw, which matches the time I spent browsing on my Pixel. Further down the list, Slack, Messenger, and Pixel Screenshots all sat at under 1%, including background time. The apps I assumed were the problem just weren’t using enough battery to register as an issue.
This could be due to Google’s own March 2026 policy change on Wake Lock, which flags apps for wake locks that don’t have a legitimate reason. It could be that Android already knows which behaviors are actually worth tamping down on, and app refresh might not be one of them.
Plus, if you restrict apps like Spotify and Messenger to save battery, you’ll end up killing some of their functionality. Music will stop playing on Spotify the minute the screen turns off, and incoming messages won’t come in unless you have Messenger up and running.
- OS
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iOS, Android, macOS, Windows
- Price model
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Freemium
This app gives you a complete overview of your Wi-Fi network in just a few taps. You can scan your network to see exactly which devices are connected, check who’s currently online or offline, and run a quick speed test to measure your connection’s performance. It also helps you stay in control of your network’s security by identifying unfamiliar devices, allowing you to investigate them and, if necessary, block or remove them to keep your connection safe and uninterrupted.
I still made one change
Once I ruled out the apps I use a lot, I looked for something that was genuinely idle. Geekbench 6 is on my phone for the benchmarking tests I’ve done in the past, and its App battery usage screen showed the same collapsed Allow background usage toggle. Since I wanted it fully restricted and not merely Optimized, I switched that toggle off outright. So far, nothing seems broken.
And that was my takeaway. This isn’t a five-app power move or another checklist of settings to flip all at once. It’s one setting, applied only to the apps sitting idle on your phone.
If I went in restricting everything with high background numbers, I might have broken my photo backup and slowed down Assistant without accomplishing much of anything. My battery life didn’t dramatically improve overnight with this one change, either. What did change is that Geekbench works when I run it, and there’s no need for it to keep it active in the background.