Is there something strange happening with WatchOS today? I have a Series 2 Nike Edition running 5.3.2 and a Series 5 Nike Edition running 6.0.1. Both has normal "all day battery" life prior to today. However, today both have drained battery much quicker (the Series 2 drained almost completely in half a day, the Series 5 now down to 7% after 10 hours). What would cause this sudden battery drain? No change in usage.
Apple Watch
Contacted Apple Support this morning who suggested rebooting both iPhone (11 Pro) and watch. Did not fix the problem, watch drained to 0% in 5 hours. iPhone has also drained down to 60% in the same time, which is much quicker than usual. Looked at the Battery Level screen, and note that Music has used 30% of my battery with more than 2 hours background activity although I have not listened to any music on my phone today. Any ideas?
Contacted Apple Support this morning who suggested rebooting both iPhone (11 Pro) and watch. Did not fix the problem, watch drained to 0% in 5 hours. iPhone has also drained down to 60% in the same time, which is much quicker than usual. Looked at the Battery Level screen, and note that Music has used 30% of my battery with more than 2 hours background activity although I have not listened to any music on my phone today. Any ideas?
Same here. I have the Series 4 watch and Pro 11 phone. Updated to 6.0.1 Sunday evening, Monday my battery lasted 6 hours, I fully charged it before going to bed and woke up this morning to it being completely dead. So frustrating, wish I hadn’t updated it.
Same here - last two days with Series 2 watch - lasts from about 7am to 3pm if I am lucky.... was fine and going whole day (18 hours) including long (90 mins - 3 hour) workouts up until two days ago ....
Same here. Series 4 on iOS 6.0.1. Normally only uses a quarter of the battery after 16-17 hours. Since yesterday, it almost drained completely after the same amount of time. Tried rebooting iPhone and watch in order from that other Apple support post, but still seems to be draining more quickly than normal. Next step for me is to restore and re-pair the watch.
and before the stock support warriors come in, no, I hadn’t installed any apps, third party or otherwise, or changed any complications, faces, etc., or done anything to the watch. And yes, the iPhone was already updated well before the drain.
Glad to know it's not just me. My Apple Series 3 watch has been brilliant. It will have around 40-50% left when it goes onto charge overnight. Im now running out of charge by mid afternoon - all since the last upgrade. Hope Apple can sort this quickly.
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
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.
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).
Did you try the iPhone/watch shutdown/restart procedure:
Mine seems to be back to normal after
that.
that was advised from G35 Driver in earlier feeds.
This is obviously a software problem that Apple refuse to acknowledge. Everyone's watch was happily chugging along getting up to two day's life out of a single charge until the recent software updates.
Getting your watch "repaired" will only cost you money as there is nothing wrong with the hardware of most people's watches (IMHO).
My watch used to get about 35 hours out of a single charge and then it dropped to about 6. Apple couldn't help me (spent almost 2 hours at an Apple store) but worked for me was :-
This (somehow) fixed the battery drain on my watch (series 2). It is back to it's usual long battery life. Not saying the above will fix anyone else's issue but these are the steps I took - plus I cursed a lot.
Good luck
Tried all of the following advice so far and non seem to work for me.
Just gonna list it down so others can try and hopefully one of the advice might work for them.
Not sure if there are more but please add on to the list if you guys come across anything else that works, this will help readers to save some time looking though the comments I hope.
I found it helpful to have Apple remotely look at the watch first, before going all the way down to an Apple Store:
Did you try the iPhone/watch shutdown/restart procedure:
Mine seems to be back to normal after that.
I have at least partially fixed the problem, although the battery drain is definitely still much higher than previously.
My phone battery also was draining very quickly and the battery app told me that the Music app had used 93% of my battery (all background), I hadn't even listened to music that day! Restarting didn't help, so did a hard restart and that fixed the phone battery, and today my watch has lasted a full day. It's almost flat though where previously it would probably be closer to 50% by this time of the day. So still high, but at least it's not dying before lunch time...
Yesterday after restarting the iPhone/watch the watch had ~65% left after a long day (20 hours). It seems to be improved after the restart, but I’m keeping an eye on it. Maybe something in iOS 13.1.3 temporarily stirred up some extra background work in the watch.
Apple Watch sudden battery drain?
