watchOS 7 Battery Drain

So this battery drain issue has plagued me for days now since I updated my Series 4 Cellular to WatchOS7! I had tried all kinds of potential solutions including resetting, recharging, checking all apps & settings even more; nothing seemed to help! Today reading a post here, they suggested unpairing & repairing the watch might work (they said it did for them) so I thought what the ****. Well, after unpairing then repairing restoring using iCloud backup, the battery seem to drain even faster! I sat there watching the battery app on my watch drop as I looked 1% per couple of minutes! So since the battery was already low, I decided to put it on the charger (it’s Sunday and I’m not going anywhere or doing anything so...). Gave the watch a full charge 100%. Got it and now after over 3 hrs it’s still at 97%!!! Just sayin...not sure what happened? Full charge? Don’t know but I’m praying it’s fixed at least until Apple investigates and updates!

MY FIX! I updated my Series 4 to OS7 late on 9/18 and the battery drain was ginormous. I charged it up to 100% and put it on for sleep monitoring at 12a. The battery drain in the morning (8a) of 9/19 left it at 76% instead of an average with OS6.2.8 at 86%. During 9/19 it dropped rapidly from 76% to 10% by 2p (normal average by 2p was 59%). Around 11a I rebooted (held down the side button until it turned off then hold down the button until it restarted) and reset (held down both the crown and side button together until it shut down and then held down the side button until it restarted. I also turned off "Optimized Battery Charging" on the Watch at Settings/Battery/Battery Health and Background Refresh for all apps except for a few health monitoring apps at iPhone/Watch app/General/Background App Refresh but the battery went down to 10% at 2p and was nearly dead at 2p. The average hourly battery drop for an entire day (12a-8p) under OS 6.2.8 for a week in mid August was just 3.5%. On 9/19 (12a-2p) under OS 7.0 it was nearly double at 6.4%.

In the evening of 9/19, I unpaired my Watch 4 in the iPhone Watch app at All Watches/Info button after Apple Watch 4/Unpair Apple Watch. Then I paired it again and used the copy made when unpairing to restore it. I charged it to 100%, put it on at 12a and by 8a it had dropped to 82%, much better but not the 85% average or within the 2% variation from the week in August. At 11a it has dropped to 70% vs the 72% August week average but within the 2% variation. It seems that unpairing and re-pairing the way I did it has fixed my huge battery drain problem as it has for some others in this thread.

I unpaired then repaired my watch. After a 1.5 hour workout and a 1.5 hour bike ride my watch sat at 80% - the unpairing and repairing seems to have worked. I still hope apple addresses the problem with an update to watchOS.

tried removing and adding my series 3 and did not work. it can't be thy hand washing to the best of my knowledge series 3 does not have that option. just want a solution. yes battery optimization is off.

I tried unpairing and re-pairing plus switching off background refresh for several watch apps (apps which I never use) and battery life seems much better now. Need to try it for another day or so to be sure but I think unpairing/re-pairing may be the solution.

I have the same problems with a Series 5. I only use it for notifications.

I tried repairing it and even configured it as a new Apple Watch. Battery life did NOT improve after this. I'm estimating about 25 hours of battery life for a Watch which I'm hardly using. with watchOS 6 this was around 40 hours.

Having the same issue! Got a series 5. Since updating battery is dead by 8pm. I normally do two cycles a day and my battery still isn’t anywhere near by the time I go to bed. Contacted Apple support and didn’t get any useful help. Got told to ‘optimise’ usage and a links to tips to reserve battery page!

Same here. The battery life is terrible on my S4. My battery health is at 97%. However, the battery drains very fast. As I started paying attentions, I noticed it fall by 6% or 7% in the span of two minutes.

I’ve got the same battery drain problem with my AW4, when I use the Workout app for long walks and Strava for bicycling. The day I didn’t work out, drain was pretty normal, so something with the GPS out of whack? My watch’s battery life is at 93%.

I’ve never had such an extreme battery drainage with a new OS, so for those who say it takes a few days to settle in, that would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath. Today is Sunday, I upgraded last Wednesday, so it’s been four full days.

Same issue after upgrade with series 5. Was draining 1% per minute! Drained it completely and then charged to 100%. This fixed the rapid drain, but I still have to charge twice a day and that is taking way longer than usual. I would expect a 7.1 soon. There better be cause this is most assuredly a software issue. I opened a ticket with support and was told “well, there are a lot of behind the scenes updates still going on after upgrade. This is probably causing the drain.” Really?

I had this problem, too. I did a hard reset and then repaired from the backup. First it seems to drain but like a miracle after a full night change today my Series4 Apple Watch has gone back to normal. I did 30 minutes of elliptical inmate morning and now after 6 hours of use I still have 90% left, which is almost as with the previous OS. It is frustrating that Apple has not had any information about this anywhere and you just need to use trial and error to find a cure. I hope my problems are now over but fingers crossed.

I wear my watch between 12 and 15 hours a day. When I would go to bed I normally have at least 30% charge until iwatchIOS 7. A new OS is released along with a new watch model —-now battery issues! What is going on Apple? I have already turned everything possible all in uninstalled all apps.

Try to unpair and then pair it back to your iPhone with the most recent backup. I did that this morning and my Watch Series 4 is back to normal.

It is dumb and it should not be this way, but it did the trick for me (and a number of others but clearly not everyone). Makes no sense why restoring the backup made when you unpaired your phone works when you load it back on your Watch.

I have opened ticket with Apple on the battery issue after the upgrade. After the troubleshooting session it became obvious that the third party software causes the issue. I have disabled all third party apps from my watch yesterday, rebooted the watch. Everything got back to normal today. I was trying to load several apps back to the watch one by one, but many malfunction. It looks like it is not compatible with the watch OS7. Some apps work just fine, some not. So, there is no fault on Apple side 😀

Possible solution... I say this because it worked for me... First make sure you have your watch back-up... then unpair... then pair it as you would a new watch...

At the 12hr mark I have 57% looking good (fingers crossed)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204568

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205189