watchOS 7 Battery Drain

I am not optimistic that this update will fix the problem. It does not discuss battery issues at all. When I download OS 7.01, my battery dropped to 97% in 4 minutes and all I did was look at the watch. Apple please fix this problem or the watch will be known as just an expensive bracelet.

The unpair/pair from backup seems to have solved my problem. Took my AW 5 from charger 8:30am and did 1 hour of workout (with cardiac monitoring on). Now it's 5pm where I live and I have 76% of battery left. Seems OK now.

But... my setup: I don't receive notifications, handwash is off, sleep mode is off etc. When I don't workout, I normally go to bed with 70% of battery left.

So I followed the advice of others on this thread and unpaired and repaired the watch (kept cellular plan). It definitely works! I took the watch off charge at 3:50am and at 5am after a drive to work and a 40 min walk, dropped to 98. That’s better than before os7! Now Apple have released 7.1... I’m reluctant to install. It’s a shame that we, as consumers have to do this. I didn’t pay roughly $1000 for a product that I have to troubleshoot myself...

This morning I updated my iPhone 11 to iOS 14.01. Now the Watch app is really pushing hard to update my AW4 to WatchOS7.01. After unpair/pair twice to get my battery back to snuff and figuring out that I needed to turn Bluetooth off and on again in WatchOS7.0 to restore being able to unlock my Macs, I'm pretty reluctant to update to 7.01. I'll probably do it tonight before charging so I get the whole day tomorrow to see the hopefully good or benign results on battery life and Mac unlocking.

I wish someone from Apple would post that they are aware of the problem and say that they are working on a fix. My battery health has dropped 3 points in the last two days. I am worried that this is weakening the battery so I am not wearing the watch and leaving it on the charger.

I have not done the unpair/re-pair step to see if it helps yet with my Watch battery drain (series 4 dead in approx. 4 hours from overnight full charge), but I DID update to 14.0.1 on my iPhone XS and am now trying to see if there is a WatchOS update (which I see there is from this forum), however since updating my iPhone, I just get "Unable to check for updates" now in the Watch app.

Apple is really dropping the ball these days and I'm seriously tempted to part ways.

Series 5 WatchOS 7.0.1

Battery drain issues seem better with pairing and unpairing.

It was almost unusable with about 8% drain every hour before the pair-unpair process...

But battery still doesn't last as long as WatchOS 6

Watch series 4, same issue after update. Unpair, pair and restore solved the issue. I did miss some watch faces after the restore, but recreating them was not much of an issue. Sad that Apple does not recommend this step. Would save us a lot of stress and anger.

My battery loss yesterday was horrendous. There was no published help from Apple so I discovered discussion boards and used the belt and braces (US = suspenders) method recommended on the threads. I paired and unpaired and then followed the routine of switching the phone and the watch on and off following a sequence.

it worked a charm. The six-month-old Series 5 is back to normal. I put it on at 100% at 10:45, took an hour’s exercise and wore it normally for the rest of the day. At midnight it shows 30% but I fiddle with it a lot and always have the brightness control on max.

Why couldn’t Apple put out a reassuring and helpful bulletin at the start of this omnishambles ? No company is ever too big to fail if it takes its customers for granted.

After the original issue and the unpair/pair - power down/up phone & watch were executed the situation improved greatly. It wasn't quite same as 6, but it was tolerable.

I did the update to both phone and watch last night and fully charged both. It appears that with normal nightly wear (for Autosleep) it's draining at about 1% per hour even though I forgot to put watch in theatre mode overnight.

Overall seems back to normal. Amen

I also unpaired/repaired as a new watch (not with backup) and it helped slow the battery drain quite a bit. I also turned off the watch’s WiFi connection, which was reset to on; in the past this has caused the battery to drain faster. This has further slowed the battery drain, but will have to see if I can get through 24 hours without charging. To turn off WiFi on the watch itself, go to the Settings app on the watch (not on the phone), select WiFi and toggle it to off.

I have an Apple Watch 5 (non-cellular) and could go 1.5 days or more without a battery charge depending on use.

I updated my AW4 (Battery Health 94) from 7.0 to 7.01 last night. This morning it's running way ahead of 6.2.8 and 7.0. I put it on at 12 midnight, slept with it on to get sleep measurements and at 10am Battery Life stood at 83%.

With 6.2.8 Battery Life at 10a averaged only 76%. On Sept 19th with the 7.0 update it dropped 55% at 10a and was dead by 2p. The unpair/pair from backup and following Gerhard Leeb's steps plus toggling Bluetooth of and on to get it to unlock my Macs again, from Sept. 20-24 on 7.0 it averaged 78% at 10a. So 83% today at 10a with 7.01 is terrific.

This fixed it for me too, now ending the day on 40+% where before I was charging at least twice since watch os7 upgrade . It’s a pain but unpair and then pair again and should fix for you too hopefully. No idea why this fixes it tho 🤷‍♂️

Need help! I unpaired my watch while keeping it on my wrist and then repaired my watch from my backup. I did all the unpairing and repairing from my iPhone 11. Everything worked except my battery is dropping even faster. I turned on the activity workout and I am losing a percent a minute with the activity going. My watch is a Series 4. I even turned off the phone and the watch and restarted them. What did I do wrong?

I believe the issue is related to some form of processing staying on even after a workout is ended. I noticed that after a work out if I turn off my watch and turn it back on I do not have the battery drain issue. If I do a work out and end the work out and leave my watch on it drains my battery a ton. My thought is there some kind of process running in the background associate with a work out that is not turning off when I work out has ended. Although doing a restore would be a forever solution I’ll just deal with the hassle of turning my watch on and off