Doze in Android Marshmallow is great for saving battery life, but you can disable Doze on certain applications so you’ll always get those notifications.
Android 6.0 Marshmallow introduced a new battery-saving feature called Doze. If you want to learn the details about Doze, you can read this explanation article I previously wrote about it. The idea behind Doze is to prevent the smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch from waking up when you’re not using it. Android checks for things like movement to determine if you are using the device or not. So, even if the phone is in your pocket, you walking around will prevent Android from activating Doze.
Android does this because if you’re walking around with your smartphone or tablet, then you’re obviously using it in some sort of way(at least the majority will be).
However, when your smartphone or tablet is sitting on the nightstand or your desk for extended periods of time(multiple hours), then Android will recognize this and stop asking apps if they have a notification for you. This can be bad for some people though as there are some who want to always get a notification no matter what is happening with their phone or tablet. So for this reason, today I want to show you how to disable Doze for a particular application(or multiple apps).
Disable Doze for an App
- Launch the Settings Application
- Scroll Down and Tap on the ‘Battery’ Option
- Tap the 3-dot Menu at the Top Right
- Then Tap on the ‘Battery Optimization’ Option
- Tap the ‘Not Optimized’ Drop Down Menu
- And Tap on ‘All Apps’
- Scroll Down and Tap on the App You Want to Disable Doze for
- Tap on the ‘Don’t Optimize’ Option
- Then Tap ‘Done’ at the Bottom Right
Explanation
To start, we’ll need to dive into the Settings menu of your device and then tap on the Battery option. From here, look up at the top right and tap on the 3-dot menu to reveal a few extra options. You’ll want to tap on the Battery Optimization option that you see in this menu and then you’ll be taken to another screen. Here, you want to tap on the drop down menu and then select All Apps. The first screen you see is only going to show you apps that already have Doze disabled for them. So unless you have done this before, you’re only going to see Google Play Services(which will be grayed out). Although, different OEMs might have different rules for their own apps and services so you might see some others in there.
Tapping on the All Apps option will list every single app and service for the Android smartphone or tablet. This is where we need to be in order to find an application that we want to disable Doze for. From here, we can scroll down and tap on the application you want to disable. You’ll see a dialog box pop up asking if you want Android to optimize battery usage for this app or not. By letting Android optimize battery usage for an app, this means that Doze is enabled for that app. Telling Android to not optimize for battery usage means it will disable Doze for that particular application.
This isn’t to say that disabling optimization for an app will let it run 24/7 and eat up all of your battery. All it’s doing is let that application run and create notifications, if needed. Android will still have Doze enabled and it will still prevent other pesky apps from keeping your phone or tablet awake all the time too. We’re just creating a special rule for a specific application. You can disable Doze for as many applications as you’d like too. You aren’t limited to just disabling Doze for one app. So if you have a lot of apps that you use for work or something, you can tell Android to not optimize each of them.
You can also come back into this Battery Optimization page and turn Doze back on for any of these apps we disable it for right now. This is useful if you change your mind about an app, or maybe you find out that it’s keeping your device awake more than you’d like. You’ll just need to go back here and tap the app again, then tell Android to start optimizing it for battery usage.
