Apple watch series 4 battery drain about 15% per hour without any active app

@TygerMane Have you tried reinstalling both phone and watch as new devices? I started having this same problem after the last update. I tried all the troubleshooting steps, turning just about everything on the watch off (including the screen), no extra apps installed, and my battery lasted no more than 6-8 hours. I have AppleCare+, so they did an express replacement even though they said the battery tested fine. The replacement started doing the same thing once I updated to the latest watchOS. In desperation, I finally wiped and reinstalled my phone as a new device, then paired the watch as a new device, and I now have 40-50% battery left after 12-14 hours. I still have lots turned off and no extra apps installed, but the watch is more usable now. I'm hoping the impending upgrade to watchOS 6 helps with battery life.

Persevere with support. They can install a watchOS logging app which they leave running for 24 hours and then remove with the logs. My series 4 was dropping at least 10% an hour with use or no use. Tried all the usual unpairing, repairing, setup as new, turned everything off with no success. Remote battery test results returned fine. However, once Tech analysed the logs an issue was identified. Fortunately, I had AppleCare so a replacement was provided.

I had this issue. The diagnostics said that there was nothing wrong with the battery as well. I discovered that my iPhone and watch software were out of date, even thought I had automatic updates turned on, thought I had been taking updates, and they both said that the software was up to date. I had backup set to be done over wifi. I have Catalina on my Mac, so I needed to plug in my phone, go to finder and click on my phone. Once I did, I found out that I was waaaay behind on my software (I was on a version of 12 & should have been on 13). Once I took that update on my phone, my watchOS also jumped a release (from 5 to 6).

I kept sending it in and escalating through customer service until they finally replaced it under warranty. The biggest kick in the face was that engineering eventually said it is a known issue with no known fix. It took a month including 3 times into the repair center (no prob found every time) two trips into apple store, countless phone calls, and having to put some monitoring profile on my phone. Very disappointed in the whole process.

@brentdo posted this on another thread and it resloved my issue with my watch.

I found a solution to this on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/dmbuj5/macos_catalina_trustedpeershelper_always_running/

Follow the steps provided by "nielsvz" to delete a small database called "com.apple.security.keychain-defaultContext.TrustedPeersHelper". I followed the steps and it's been almost 48 hours and TrustedPeersHelper is now only taking between 0-0.3% CPU on my MB Pro. You'll probably need to log back into iCloud after deleting but other than that I've had no issues.

This process was also related to poor battery life on my iPhone 11 Pro and Apple Watch Series 3, which are also back to normal.

If battery life on your Apple Watch is a problem, I have a few suggestions that can help.

1. Choose a dark/minimal clock face. Since the watch can wake up whenever you move your arm a certain way, choosing a dark clock face can take advantage of the OLED screen technology and save battery life
2. Make sure to close background apps. This can be done by pressing the side button once and sliding the apps to the left then pressing the red “X”
3. Turn down your screen brightness. In my experience my Apple Watch can be seen in direct sunlight even with the lowest brightness setting
4. If you really need too, turn on power reserve when you aren’t actively using the watch
5. Turn off walkie talkie
6. If you believe it is a hardware issue, contact Apple and ask them to take a look at it

Hope I could help!

In the previous post I said that battery usage was back to normal after I had taken third party apps and closed everything in the dock.

Update: After two days of normal operation, on the third day it used 3% of the battery in 15 minutes, put it immediately to charge and left for about 5 to 10 minutes and removed. Battery usage is back to normal.

One thing I noticed, is sometimes in the middle and at the top of the dial (where the drop symbol appears) a bar symbol is appearing (as if I'm listening to some music) I clicked on this symbol and it appears that a song is being played on the iPhone .. and no, no music is being played on the iPhone. If I click pause, it shows as if it is paused, but after a few seconds it shows as if it has played again. After effectively to play a song and then stopping on the iPhone, the symbol stopped showing on Watch. My battery life has been normal for a few days.

Guys, my battery run off in less then half day.

Apple did the remote check and said that everything was ok!

so I went in an apple store, also there they said, that after the check that the iwatch works fine, so I asked to send the watch to apple for another Check. After 3 days I received a new iwatch and now it works really good. The battery run out after a day and half.

It’s the WiFi

Hi all. I had the same problem but realised that for some reason the Wifi setting on my actual watch kept getting turned on. I think I have narrowed it down to when there is update to the watch.

The important thing is that you can’t turn it off from the watch app on the phone. You have to do it from the watch.

Go to settings>Wifi> and then turn it off

Once I worked this out my Watch battery would last anything between 24 & 36 hours!

Just a side note, I am having the same issue with battery depleting rapidly during the day. I read here and on other google pages and turned the walkie talkie app off on the control panel slide and as of day 1 with it off, battery life is vastly improved. I’m cautiously optimistic.

While I can't discuss any details, if you are running iOS 13 beta on your phone this is a known problem, unless you are also eligible to run the Watch OS beta also.

Unpair and re-pair, setting up as a new watch. Do Not reload the backup, leave it as a vanilla watch with just the default apps, and test for a few days. You can configure your email and iMessage, they shouldn’t cause problems. When you have seen the basic performance start adding your other apps one at a time until you find the culprit. It might take a few days because each step takes time, but I’m confident you will get a result.

My wife's watch has the same issue. We are very technical IT people and this entire situation is ridiculous. After spending a very protracted amount of time with Support, running programs and reports which we sent to Apple, we have been told that this is a software issue and they "are working on it". It should be resolved in an upcoming update. No projected timeframe for this update. It's very interesting that this is only impacting a set number of watches. I have the same watch and get two days from a charge. We've been basically told that we will have a completely useless watch until they get around to publishing a fix in a future update. I've been an Apple customer for decades. I would expect more from the most valuable company in the world. This message string dates back to April. They should have fixed this or replaced the watches by now. They obviously have a systemic issue with a set number of watches and don't appear to have any sense of urgency in resolving it.

These were good tips though, I had a battery drain issue once. I say “had” because it resolved itself after using tips like these. I eliminated all I could and gradually added things back. I was rather disappointed I had to make Minnie mouse’s bright red dress grey, but I’m back to a coloured dress now. Still though, it’s animated and is going to use more battery.

cutting down on notifications greatly enhanced battery longevity (for me). I had a weather app giving out too many alerts. I (thought I) wanted to know about storms forming in the pacific, but it was typhoon season in Japan and was going off all day, after each storm was upgraded. I turned that off to just be on my iPad app. I don’t use mail except for VIP mail.

Ive had my watch on half the day now and at 100%.. to say that it was really bad before.

I had the same problem so I came to this support site. First advice that popped up was from julieda who suggested resetting the watch by pressing the side button and crown at the same time. You'll see the Apple logo while it shuts down and restarts. I've had no issues at all since doing this a couple of weeks ago. I only wish my phone had the same great success after the update played havoc with it.