watchOS 7 Battery Drain

So it’s looking like I have fixed the battery drain on my series 4 with the os7 update.

I did try the hand washing thing but that didn’t help. I have still got that switched off though.

I then binned of the Memoji app from the watch as I never use it and that’s new and at the same time I unpaired my watch then restored it from the backup on my phone.

today it’s been off charge since just before 8am, it’s now 14:42 and I tracked a five mile walk with gps and still have 80% left in the tank. I’d say that’s back to normal.

I think it was the unpaid and restore from backup that fixed it but if that doesn’t help then maybe it’s the Memoji app.

oh one other thing. I want back to the Nike analogue face as well. So it could be one of the new faces being active that’s draining it. I’ve still got them set but not in use right now.

Ok, so I followed the advice I read from some posts yesterday and unpaired my Series 4 Watch and added back as a new watch instead of restoring from backup. This appears to have resolved the battery issue I was having after the update.

I had exactly the same issue.

I tried most things including removing all apps, turning off hand washing etc.

in the end what seems to have worked is to unpair and then set up as a new watch. Bit of a pain having to set up faces how I like them and Apple Pay etc but battery seems to be much better...

Had the same problem as everyone. Very frustrating. AW4, non-cellular. I un-paired and re-paired, from the backup, and it's back to normal. The only thing not working now is that my watch doesn't want to unlock my iMac. It worked nice before the unpairing and before and after the watchOS 7 update.

I don't see my iCloud profile photo anymore in the watch settings. But I can download apps from the watch so I know my iCloud account is active on the watch. Very weird.

I will probably set up as a new watch when I have 2 hours ahead of me to reconfigure everything. Until then, at least, the battery life is now back to normal. There is hope out there!

Had the same issue for the last few days. Never had any problems with my series 5 until the update to WatchOS 7. After searching the web I found some possible solutions on this page (https://www.imore.com/how-to-fix-apple-watch-battery-life-problems). I deceided to disconnect my watch from my iPhone and connect it again with a clean installation, so not with the backup copy. It solved my problem and now I have the battery life again which I was used to, which is > 1day. Hope this helps you also!

I updated my stainless steel series four to OS7. Tried all of the obvious first. Shut off hand washing, location services, etc. Overall battery health at 93%. However, battery life rendered my watch almost unusable with average time to 10% 5 hours vs. previous 15 hour day at 50%

Good News! A simple un-pair and re-pair solved the problem.

I can confirm that unpairing and then setting up as a new watch (not from backup) seems to have fixed the issue. At the end of the day, after a 30 minute workout, I am at 56%. This is consistent with where I would be before the new watchOS.

Just wanted to let you know that the very basic un-pair and direct re-pair (with the backup that gets created when un-pairing) did the trick or me.

I un-/re-paired my watch Sunday afternoon. That took quite a while and gave me a watch equivalent of the beachball of death and some messages about low battery (even though I started unpairing in excess of 50%). The backup worked just fine and all the settings / watch faces etc. were as before. So, no hassle there.

At 11pm I charged the watch to 100% and went to bed with sleep tracking on. In the morning at 7am it still showed 92% and right now after normal usage, notification etc. (no hand washing app, though) including two bicycle workouts of one hour each (with music) the battery still shows 35%. So far so good.

I tried unpairing and pairing with a restore from backup. Still had significant battery drain.

I tried unpairing and paring as a new watch. Watch seems back to normal. So far, 7% battery drain in 3 hours.

I had same issue on AW 4 after updating to watchOS 7.

For me helped turning off (=never) localisation services for "Washing hands" App on iPhone paired with Watch (Settings-> Privacy-> Localisation services -> Washing hands

Now my watch is working like previously.

Thanks for the link. I did not go through all this at all. I unpaired my Apple Watch series 4 (44mm) with my iPhone 11. I reseted the Watch to factory. I paired the two and all is well. 100% at 7 am and 71% at 6:15 pm. I re-started my iPhone before I paired them again. Now all is well. Lucky me? I've all the latest OS on my devices as of 2020-10-19 at 6:23 pm.

Me too Dgraugh. While the Unpair/Pair again from a backup worked for my AW4, I had also turned off Background refresh for all apps, except those in a Complication (Activity, Battery, Weather) which stay on automatically and I deleted all third-party apps in the Watch app on my iPhone 11. Since then I've put back three that I use the most Cardiogram, Heart Analyzer and Remote with no problem and turned on Optimize Battery again. Still normal battery use.

For those that the Unpair/Pair Again method does not work they might try uninstalling all 3rd party apps as well and then if that works, re-install only the essential ones but one at a time.

We have four Apple Watches in our family: one series 4, two series 5, one series 6. The series 4 and both series 5 got serious battery issues after 10-15 months. Typical symptoms: shutting down suddenly, while the battery indicator jumps from > 60% down to 0%. Back on the charger, it takes less than 20 minutes to top up back to 100%. All Apple Watches had even more battery problems when being used outside in the winter time (cold temperatures). You could also see it in the battery settings: the bars jumped from 80% to 10% within minutes, and back on the charger they were full again after short time.

Resetting the watches or unpairing/pairing them did not help. Luckily we have Apple Care+ and Apple replaced all three watches without asking many questions. The new watches are ok for now, but the question is: how long?

My series 6 is new and did not yet have any issues.

On the watch 4, I also had another problem just recently: there was a general batter drain. The watch lost 20-25% per hour, but it was a linear decline, so different from the issue I described above. In fact, in this case it helped to just unpair/pair the watch without restoring from backup. After that, the battery worked again.

I believe it is a general issue with wearables and their batteries that the wear of the battery is very high over time. After one year you will face the first issues e.g. when you use the device in a cold environment (shutting down suddenly etc.), and after 18 months or so, the issues become more serious and limit the value of the device a lot. I don't think only Apple has these problems. It's a fact that the batteries in wearables are much more often on their exposure limit than batteries e.g. in smartphones. They get depleted fast and heavy. Every day. And that causes wear.

Best recommendation: buy AppleCare+ with every Apple Watch. It's worth it and you will receive unbureaucratic help when you have battery issues.

Unfortunately it seems you are in the same situation many of us are. it's not the watch and unpairing and restarting and resetting your phone etc., won't do a thing.

it's a glitch somewhere in the Apple ecosystem that is affecting many of us but not all.

Nobody has been able to pinpoint it yet and Apple isn't even recognizing the issue.

best thing to do - return the watch, get your money back and buy another one when Apple fixes it.