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
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.
So I’ve also been having this issue. It has to be watchOS 6. Since updating to 6, my 3 Series watch would barely make it to the afternoon. It used to have 50%+ left at night when putting on the charger after 18 hours. And in the battery app on my iPhone 11 Pro you could see the phone battery draining in a straight line throughout the day even with minimal use.
Yesterday Apple sent me a replacement Series 3 watch thanks to having AppleCare. Luckily the replacement came with watchOS 5.3, and right now after 16 hours my watch is at 78% and my phone is at 76%. Miraculous!
i will not be updating the replacement to watchOS 6 until Apple acknowledges and fixes this issue!
I think it’s largely due to the music app I turned it’s background refresh off possibility other background refreshers but have since unloaded other apps I don’t ever use and have had great results, I’m at 58% after an hour workout and 16 hours of wear. I never told the music app to even add play lists so might be something for others to look into. Best of luck!
Power down phone then watch...
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.
UPDATE: Yesterday, I turned off my iPhone Xs Pro, and then my Apple Watch v4, and left them off for about 10 minutes. Then I turned my iPhone back on, and my Watch. A few hours later, I went to bed and put them both in their chargers (which are about 15 feet apart). This morning I put on my Apple Watch about 6:30 a.m., and it is now about 8:45 a.m.. I've used 8% of the battery (92% left), in two hours, doing nothing much (no texts, no messages coming in, no music being played). That works out to about 48% in 12 hours, which is approximately, +/- what I was getting before.
One thing to note. The battery drain started about the same time I signed up for two Apple studies. I have not revoked those permissions, as I want to see what happens. But, does anyone have any actual experience knowledge whether those studies monitor something in such a way as to drain the battery of the Watch faster?
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.
DaveH please do provide an update regarding 6.1.1. I'm still waiting to update to watchOS 6 until this issue is resolved.
I received a replacement Series 3 from Apple mid November because of this issue, and my replacement Series 3 is still on watchOS 5.3 with great battery life (over 24 hours).
For anyone out there with this issue, I'd recommend taking your watch to an Apple Store and demanding it be downgraded to watchOS 5 until this issue is resolved.
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.
Yes, that mostly fixed my issue. Was not a permanent fix though, I've had to do it on 3 separate occasions now. Every single time was the Music app going bananas. Even though I wasn't listening to any music.
I have noticed the same issue. I have a series 4 watch and an iPhone XR. My phone battery life is fine, however after the update to watchOS 6.0.1, my watch battery drains so quickly, usually I have around 50-60% battery left by the end of the day. The other night I was charging it and my battery percentage was going backwards! This must be due to the 6.0.1 update as it was absolutely fine after the 6 update.
Please Apple get this fixed asap as I use my watch a lot and it is barely lasting my workday now!
I have also tried all manner of things to improve it, including repairing my watch, restarting/rebooting both my phone and watch etc, nothing has helped so far.
Same issue here. Took my watch off the charger at 9am this morning and it's completely dead at 9:30pm. Completely normal usage and possibly even below normal usage recently. So I'm not sure what's causing the issue. Chatted with Apple Support tonight and got the same "do a power cycle" most of you did. So I'll give that a shot tonight. If that doesn't work I'll unpair, reset my Watch and set up as new to see if that yields any better performance.
Update: I chatted with Apple Support yesterday about my series 4 (6.1 paired to XR running 13.2.2) and its miserable battery life since updating to 6.01, so two updates ago. (Used to get 24-36 hours on the watch, now down to 8 if I don’t use it too much.) Apple person was very nice, ran a diagnostic remotely on my battery — checked out fine. Then told me I could take it to a local authorized Apple dealer to see if they could determine the problem for free, unless it needs repairs of course. That wouldn’t be free because it’s out of warranty. Or I could mail it to Apple for $109.00 ‘ish to start the ball rolling. I called a local authorized dealer/service place here in town. He was also very nice but said there wasn’t anything he could do other than run a battery diagnostic.
TLDR: watch is useless beyond 8 hours of use unless or until Apple pushes a fix…or I spend another $110. Seems super unfair given I’ve done nothing to break it. But hey, if I buy a car and it breaks after warranty, even if it’s a manufacturer-caused thing, I guess I’d be on the hook for that too. So yeah, this is my last Apple Watch. For me and my needs, it’s not worth it.
I’m 100% convinced the battery drain issue began with update 6.0. I turned off everything on my series 4 (6.1) as suggested by others, including “hey siri” and I can now get through about 15 hrs on one charge. I don’t even have the lift-to-wake setting on. So my expensive technological marvel of watch does little more than any Timex I can buy for $20. My iPhone XR’s life (13.2.3) is similar. I can get through a day if I’m careful with use. That also started 2 or 3 updates ago.
I’m starting to believe this is planned obsolescence. Maybe the watches they’ve been selling have lasted too long for their bottom line. And maybe that’s why Apple has remained silent about it. I know I sound like an old-man conspiracy theorist with that. At this point, I just want Apple to publicly acknowledge the problem we’re having, even if they secretly have no intention of fixing it. LIE TO ME if you must!
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.
Apple Watch sudden battery drain?
