Apple Watch sudden battery drain?

This is a follow up to my previous posts. I found that my iPhone and Apple Watch were still draining faster than they should.

Reviewing the diagnostic logs from my iPhone and watch, I found TrustedPeersHelper still taking a lot of CPU on both devices. My mac has been fine, but something still wasn't right with my other devices.

So, this time I ran this terminal command from my mac: tpctl reset

I was then forced to login to iCloud on my mac and iPhone, but ever since my watch and iPhone are not running hot. Yesterday, I wore my watch from 7 am to midnight, and I still had 60% remaining on my watch, and 70% on my iPhone.

The "tpctl reset" resolved all of my battery issues!

If you don't have a mac, I'd recommend calling Apple or going to an Apple store. They must have a way to do the equivalent of "tpctl reset" on your behalf from their side. I hope this helps everyone.

Finally tried the following steps in these threads and posts as I had a Macbook Air (Catalina 10.15.3), iPhone 11 Pro (iOS 13.3.1), iPad (6th gen) (iPadOS 13.3.1), Apple Watch S4 Wifi (watchOS 6.1.2), and Apple TV 4K all logged into the same Apple ID and was able to confirm this "TrustedPeersHelper" process running wild on the Macbook and appears to be the culprit of the crazy battery drain.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250844998?answerId=252010215022#252010215022

https://www.waldonell.com/thoughts/articles/did-i-just-fix-my-apple-watch-5-battery-life-issue

After this, TrustedPeersHelper is utlizing 0% CPU consistently on the Macbook and seeing less than 2% drain per hour on the Apple Watch (all default settings) with normal (watch-like) use during the day and silent/do-not-disturb/theater mode on at night.

In my previous post I thought I solved the problem. That lasted about 10 days. I had occasion to reboot my iPhone, and the problem came back. This time I did go to the Apple Store. We went over all the things I tried. It seems that Apple is aware of the problem. The only thing I didn't do was to restore my watch as new when I tried the unpairing/repairing. When I got home I tried this and it did work. Been working for about 5 days now. I don't know if my problem has been fixed now, but at least I have a case number with Apple Support (my warranty runs out today, but they said that was not a problem if the battery drain still persists). One thing they did ask is, when I got my series 4 watch, did I set it up as new, or did I restore it from my previous series 3 watch. I couldn't remember, but if I did a restore maybe that's part of the problem. In any event, I would recommend anyone with this problem to got to an Apple Store and open up a case file.

A previous poster already brought it up, but you folks should look into the diagnostic logs for the watch (see Watch App, General>Diagnostic Logs). For me it said ‘TrustedPeersHelper’ and I posted the solution here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251111200

if you look through the logs, see if there’s a process with absurd CPU time.

60% battery remaining after 14 hours (Apple Watch 4).

I completely agree with your frustration there and that Apple should have a more rigorous software quality control system in place. However, that being said, you probably want to get a resolution for your problem.

It might not have anything to do with the problem which I had! I would suggest looking into the diagnostic logs to see if there’s any process that is causing an unusual high number of CPU hours. Also, see if the battery drains that much if you place the Watch in Airplane mode for a while and simultaneously turning off Bluetooth on your iPhone (no Internet connection for your Watch). You can also try other things like turning off notifications completely, turning off all background processes, and setting up the watch as a new watch and seeing if the battery drain persists.

Good luck!

I guess I'm lucky I have a series 2 with only bluetooth and secondary wifi. My "solution" is to do a hard reboot about every three days, and to eliminate on my iPhone all the notifications I don't care about anyway (of which there were many). I get slightly worse than usual battery life, but nothing unbearable. I did disable music on the watch because it appeared to be the largest battery drain app. But, I didn't use music on the watch so it didn't matter.

I have not tried to rebuild it as a new watch because killing music and the notifications, killing battery sucking apps on the phone when I'm not using them (Tile is among the worst) and rebooting every few days (usually right before I put it on the charger at night) seems to have mitigated the problem. This is a runaway process problem, created by the current WatchOS in combination with the current iOS.

With a series 2 that's close to three years old, warranty won't help me. Apple needs to fix the WatchOS, even if that means "features" they thought we wanted have to be eliminated. Or, offer us an OS for less ambitious people who just want the darned thing to work.

Are you by chance using your watch to unlock your mac?

If so there was a solution that someone found out and posted a few days ago

If you are see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250844998?answerId=251866124022#251866124022

From my experience, I believe part of the issue is a run away process in either the Bluetooth stack or Sync engine, or both. I have caught apps in a perpetual installation state in the Watch app, music being stuck syncing. Clearly an issue with the software. Watch face makes a difference too. More complications requiring sync data can really hammer the Series 5 battery, which they shouldn't. I've read other posts the machine learning process hogging time on newly synced watches as it processes data. Which is why the wiping and repairing of the watch has little effect as your resetting all of the machine learning data every time and the watch has to run the process again.

All of this to say that the code base for WatchOS 6 is terrible, just like Catalina, and iOS/iPad OS 13. Because of that, I'm putting my money on software. With the constrained resources of the watch, it can't afford any runaway processes or inefficient code.

In the end, maybe you do have a bad battery, maybe you don't, but only a genius appointment will settle that question for you.

I found it helpful to have Apple remotely look at the watch first, before going all the way down to an Apple Store:

1. From your iPhone, open the Apple Support app (mostly blue with a small apple in the upper right corner);
2. Select "Get Support" (bottom middle);
3. Select your watch;
4. Select Battery;
5. Chat with an advisor and ask them do do a remote diagnostic on your battery. It's easy and very, very cool how they can connect to your watch thru your phone thru the ether ;-).

Oh yes! TrustedPeerHelpers. Event: cpu usage (93% cpu average). I have three separate logs for this.

In my case the alert badge disappeared once I re-authenticated to iCloud. Battery life has been perfect ever since.

I did reset and set up as a new watch yesterday and that seemed to fix my issue. Unfortunately I saw the same battery drain today. I have found that if I then off Bluetooth and WiFi (as well as LTE) battery is pretty stable. If I turn on LTE I lose between 4-5% an hour. Currently testing to see what happens when I turn off LTE and turn on WiFi but leave Bluetooth off. Will update tomorrow.

On Sunday by 10:09 PM my standby time was 12 hrs 12 min and my usage time was 10 hrs 23 min. I’ve found that the only way to cut down usage time is to disconnect from WiFi and Bluetooth (as well as LTE). This is with no 3rd party apps on the watch at all and background app refresh turned off on almost all apps (only workout app and messages are on).

No, I got you. All batteries will drain. 2% drop over 20 days seems abnormal to me actually!

Based upon your posts above, 8% loss per hour is bad. I think that is kinda what I was getting. Try turning the dictation on an off. That is what I did before my battery life returned but I don't know if it was the cause or just coincidence.

But will it really have an effect (in hardware terms) on the Watch battery? Or does it remain only a software-relarted issue?

I have signed out of iCloud now (another workaround mentioned somewhere), and will check again what happens in a couple of hours. If this does not make any difference, I wilI sign into iCloud again, wait a couple of days and if the problem still persists I will restore my watch as new and pair it with another iPhone that I have, fot the final test. It seems there is a long way go until we discover whether the problem is software related or if the battery itself is faulty.