Android apps will have to become more careful about how much memory they use. Starting from February 2027, in fact, Google Play will introduce new requirements for applications and games, designed to make the use of resources more efficient. Exceeding the parameters may affect visibility on the store and publication possibilities.
Behind this choice there is the desire to keep smartphones fast and responsive, but also, as explained by Google itself, to deal with the constraints that the mobile sector is facing in hardware availability and the increase in memory prices. These are factors that are also influencing the way in which new devices are designed and which make it even more important to use usable resources efficiently.
Why Google will ask Android apps to reduce RAM consumption
RAM is the temporary memory that smartphones, computers and other devices use to store the data necessary for running tasks. When you open an app, some of the information it needs is loaded right here, because it can be retrieved more quickly than data stored internally.
The available space, however, is not infinite. If a single application takes up too much of it, Android must intervene by compressing or moving data and, when this is not enough, it can close some processes. According to Google, excessive use can result in slowdowns, increased CPU usage and battery consumption, closing of background apps and longer reopening times.
The problem has become more relevant because we can no longer take it for granted that each new generation of smartphones has more RAM than the previous one. With memory costs rising, some new devices are in fact keeping the available RAM unchanged or even reducing it.
Google began addressing the issue with Android 17, introducing per-application limits. The measure debuted on Pixels and, according to the company, over the next year it will be adopted by a growing number of manufacturers on devices with configurations ranging from 4 GB to over 16 GB.
How the memory limits introduced with Android 17 work
The roof is not the same for everyone. An application running on a 4GB smartphone, for example, is not treated the same as one running on a 12 or 16GB model. Android establishes different thresholds depending on the overall RAM of the device and the state in which the process is found.
In this first phase Google has set them in a relatively conservative way, focusing above all on anomalous cases, such as memory leaks that lead an app to accumulate data to the point of compromising the stability of the system.
When a process reaches its limit, Android can move some of its data into zRAM, a portion of memory where information is compressed to take up less space. However, if consumption continues to grow beyond the expected threshold, the system may end the process.
This is where the Memory Limiter comes into play, the mechanism introduced in Android 17 to prevent a single application from monopolizing the device’s resources. For developers, it means more carefully controlling how much space is taken up during use and what remains allocated when the app goes into the background.
An app open on the screen normally needs more resources, while one that is not visible should free up what is no longer needed. Unnecessarily storing large images or other objects can take up space from other processes and make the system less fluid.
What changes on Google Play from February 2027
Android 17 intervenes directly on the operation of the device, while Google Play will add a second level of control. Apps and games will in fact have to respect new thresholds relating to three aspects: memory consumption, image management and code optimization.
To evaluate memory consumption, Google will take into account the amount actually used by the app, including the part that Android can compress when it needs to free up space. Thresholds will vary based on available RAM on your device and the state of the app. For example, on a smartphone with 8 GB of RAM a foreground app will be able to use up to 2.25 GB, while when it goes into the background the limit will drop to 1.5 GB. Higher values will be expected for games.
Another parameter will concern bitmaps, i.e. the images managed by the app. Photographs, previews and graphics can in fact take up a lot of memory, especially when they are loaded at a higher resolution than necessary or continue to be stored even when they are no longer visible.
Finally, Google will also check the optimization of the code. The goal is to push developers to eliminate unused parts and make applications less cumbersome. For those affected by the new requirements it will be necessary to achieve at least 25% in each of the three activities envisaged, i.e. code optimization, reduction and obfuscation.
Android vitals, the system already used by Google Play to monitor problems such as crashes and freezes, will help verify compliance with these parameters. Google will analyze aggregated and anonymized data from the devices of users who have consented to the collection, in order to identify apps that use an excessive amount of resources.
What happens to apps that consume too much memory
Exceeding a certain amount of RAM on a single occasion does not mean that an app will automatically disappear from the Play Store. Google has established specific thresholds above which the data indicates behavior that is considered problematic. The evaluation takes place on data from the last 28 days, not on the single peak recorded by a smartphone.
As the new requirements go into effect, apps and games that do not meet these parameters may experience reduced visibility on Google Play and face publishing limitations. It is therefore not an automatic expulsion from the store, the system rather aims to push developers to intervene before the excessive use of resources compromises the experience on the devices.
Google has already started showing new data on memory usage and bitmaps in Play Console and plans additional diagnostic tools. Developers will thus be able to understand under which conditions their software uses too many resources and identify any memory leaks.
For those using an Android smartphone, however, there will not be a switch to activate or a new setting to configure. The effect should be mostly indirect: applications designed to manage RAM better, greater stability when multiple apps are used together, and fewer cases where a particularly demanding app ends up slowing down the rest of the system.
The novelty also shows a change of perspective. For years, the increase in power of smartphones has allowed software to become more complex by relying on ever-increasing amounts of memory. In a scenario in which hardware availability has become less predictable, Google is trying to reverse at least part of the reasoning: it is no longer just the phone that has to offer more resources, but the apps that have to manage them more efficiently.
