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

I'm having the same problem! It's rediculous for Apple to say that some background process is draining the battery but they have no way to tell what that process is. Really. This is a $400+ watch!

I bought mine on May 8, and on May 22, it alerted me that only 10% battery was left. That was before noon. I'd charged the watch to 100% and took it off the charger at 10pm the night before. I've turned off just about everything, and I can watch it drain while I'm sitting on my behind.

My brother's watch has 42% charge left on the second day after charging.

You might want to wipe it clean and start all over again.

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Apple Watch, or buy one from someone else - Apple Support

Don't load the backup. It will be a minor PIA reconfiguring the watch but the data is safe (it's duplicated in the iPhone).

Set up and pair Apple Watch with iPhone - Apple Support

After upgrading to 5.3, I noticed two apps (LA Fitness and MyQ) would not launch AND the battery drain was rapid. I uninstalled those two apps and drain went to normal. BUT, I have still the issue of frequently having to perform a hard reset to enable charging. First time I've seen an inconvenient / annoying quality control issue for Apple product. May just give up on Apple Watch for a bit.

Glad I'm not the only one. I have been through a month of this crap. They are finally issuing me a replacement as a "one time exception" for my troubles. I'll wait to fully vent until after I get my replacement.

Mine started with this problem 3 days ago. Yesterday I deleted all third party apps I didn't use and were installed just because of the automatic installation. I took the background update and also closed all apps that were in the dock. It worked normal during that day. At night, when he was about 50% charged, I put him to charge at night as usual. I took it in the morning, about 8h and in less than 15 minutes had already gone 3% of the battery .. ie, it would last only about 6 hours again, then put it to charge again, even being with 97% charge, for a few 5 minutes because I had to leave ... It was the same 97% when I retired, but after 15 minutes it was still 97%, that is, it seemed normal again. It's 10:42 pm and it has 64% of the load. I will not leave all night carrying. I'll put it in early and take it out when it's 100% and see what happens. WatchOS 5.3 and no beta here.

I have not had the green snake problem, but I have read that you must let the watch drain completely, until tapping the screen or pressing any buttons has no effect - battery drained 100%. Next, make sure the charger and back of watch are wiped clean, and recharge.

I ended up exchanging my watch via amazon, since the battery drain started only a few days after I had started using it and I was still in the return period. New watch is a champ, 24h of normal use, 66% remaining. And this one shipped with watch OS 5.3. So, the problem does not appear to be software related.

Maybe there were some bad batteries in a production run? Watch with battery drain had serial number starting with G99 Y which, according to this site means it was made at 'location G99' (where apple knows which facility that identifies) in the first half of 2019 https://www.iphonetricks.org/how-to-check-and-read-the-apple-watch-serial-number/

Replacement watch was made at a different facility, second half of 2019.

Not sure why if it is hardware, that the diagnostic tests would not confirm it though...this is a head scratching problem! I'm just glad I had a somewhat hassle free resolution.

I just bought the series 4. Losing about 8% per hour. I have tried a reset and also unpair/ re-pair to my phone. Powered off and back on the phone after un-pairing and chose a new install. I was losing about 10% per hour before this so it's better but still not great. This is using the watch very minimally, like looking at the time a few times per hour and reading but not responding to texts. On a fresh charge I could work out to music using workout app and GPS for bike ride, and go all day easy on my series 1. I have tried setting the watch to wake only on tap, no difference. Also tried a couple different faces, the Inforgraph and Infograph modular. No change, set both to darker color schemes. Not really willing to go for the minimal faces, not what I want from this watch. The reset and repairing was done two days ago. is there a chance the watch will begin working more efficiently? I will return it if I can't get better results. I have not even loaded music and worked out with this, can't imagine how much worse the battery life would be if it loses 8% per hour doing nothing. Nothing includes sitting on my dresser next to my phone untouched. I have done every battery saving tip seen here and on various sites and did even use a minimal face before resetting/re-pairing, that didn't help.

Just one more piece of info. This is the cellular version but s of yet I do NOT have cell added or turned on. I can't see how that would make my battery life worse but I would like to mention it.

I am an Apple house, iMac, iPhone, and watch so this is disappointing.

I have had this same problem and same result being to apple. I have access to a lot of phone for work and synced my watch to a different phone and problem went away. My phone is a iPhone 6S on OS 12.4.1 that experiences the problem and used IPhone 8 on OS 13 to correct issue.

I fixed mine by unpairing it then resetting to factory settings and when I repaired it I repaired it as a new watch with no apps. I tried everything else and this was the only thing that fixed it. I’m pretty sure it was the walky talky that drained it but can’t prove it.

I fixed mine by unpairing it, then resetting it back to factory settings. When I paired it again I paired as a new watch and didn’t add any of the third party apps. This is what fixed it, I tried everything else and nothing worked.

Same Problem, Apple give no answer, no solution. Apple is starting stolen our money.

I'll never buy again an Apple watch. It's not possible that they don't have a software that analyze which app is burning the battery !!

Finally my dead battery problem is resolved. I made two changes at one time so I’m not sure which resolved the matter. I purchased a new iPhone and I began never leaving it on the charger more than 30 minutes a day. I’m so pleased. My battery never goes dead.

I have had the same issue and, like most who have responded, received the same run-around from Apple: "background app", "software issue", etc. I brought it into the Apple store about a week before Series 5 was released. They did the usual diagnostics and said battery health was good. When I pressed them to look further, they ran another diagnostics that showed battery cycles over several days and agreed that there seemed to be a consistent drain rate that resulted in about 8 hours of usage before it died - barely long enough to last through work day and make it home. They reset watch as a "new device" to avoid restoring any corrupted software (the standard line, it seems) and, surprisingly, scheduled a follow-up phone call 2 days later to give me a chance to monitor performance and provide an update to the support tech that would call. Sure enough, no change in the dismal performance and when the call came that Thursday, I was ready to "update" the tech. I lucked out with a great tech who seemed to understand the history, etc. and explained that because Watch OS 6 and iOS 13 was just released, I needed to update both phone and watch before they could continue since Apple doesn't support diagnosing issues on "obsolete" software. I did as asked, with no improvement, and spoke again to same tech the following Saturday at which time he said that if I would bear with them, they would like to run diagnostics on my watch over several days so that the software team could analyse what is taking place and hopefully result in a patch. I went along with everything and after sending the diagnostic files back to Apple, their engineering team determined that, surprise surprise, it wasn't software after all - it was hardware and that the watch needs to be repaired or replaced. Fortunately, I pursued this while under the original 1 year warranty and I am hoping to receive a repaired/replaced watch that actually performs closer to the 18 hour battery life we all were promised.

As a side note, it is interesting that when the Series 5 was released, the Series 4 was discontinued even though the Series 3 is still being sold. They say it is because of their multi-tier approach and the 5 is the newer "high tier" option and therefore the 4 is not necessary. However, I suspect that the hardware inside the 4 has been problematic since the beginning and they are trying to put it behind them is quickly as possible.

My advice to everyone out there - don't buy into the "software issue" theory. Keep pursuing this with your respective tech support. Go along with the methodic steps that they are suggesting and even offer to "aid engineering" by allowing diagnostics to be run, etc. Be patient as the process requires all the "t's crossed and i's dotted". Eventually, they should arrive at (read "admit") the same root cause that it is a hardware issue, not software and offer to repair or replace your defective Series 4 watch. Good Luck!!