I finally stopped letting my phone’s default settings limit me, thanks to this little-known Android power utility
https://www.androidpolice.com/stopped-phones-default-settings-limit-thanks-to-android-power-utility/
Publish Date: 2026-04-05 09:30:00
Source Domain: www.androidpolice.com
One issue I have had across my devices is that, for some reason, I have had trouble getting them to turn off or go idle when I need them to.
I use a smart alarm on my phone each morning, and have had one phone struggle to go into sleep mode after I peruse it right before bed.
As a result, the bright light from the phone on my nightstand has kept me awake and caused extra battery drain.
The last thing I want is for my phone to die in the night and for me to miss my alarm. So I checked my default settings to see if there was anything I could do differently.
Because I couldn’t find anything helpful in my settings, I downloaded an app to help me identify wake locks.
The app has been around since October 2019 and is considered decent for analyzing battery drain.
At the time I knew about it, I didn’t think I needed it, since the default Android settings had done a good job of monitoring my battery life and usage.
The app is Battery Guru. I chose Battery Guru because I had tested it out as a third-party alternative for monitoring battery health.
This app also works consistently well across various Android devices, so how it behaved on my Google Pixel 8 didn’t differ much from how it behaved on my Samsung Galaxy S25+. You will need to reconfigure the app when your operating system changes.
You need to download the Battery Guru Community version to gain access to the Wakelock detection feature. The Battery Guru Community version is available on the developer’s official Telegram channel.
Experimental features and improvements in this version are not yet always available in the public app; they are not guaranteed to be stable, so try them out at your discretion.
Battery Guru gives useful battery stats
Learn battery capacity, temperature, and current on one page
…
Source
