watchOS 7 Battery Drain

I had the same issue so I followed the instructions here. Watch Series 4, and I had to recharge the battery up to four times a day. I unpaired without doing an erase and it re-paired easily. Great, I thought. Until I noticed it had gone from 100% to 75 in less than half an hour. So I put it on the charger. No go. Green lightning bolt and charging circle appeared for a nano second and disappeared. Even though I had the watch turned off, it was draining about 1 per cent per minute. I tried a hard reset, as advised online. Nothing. Tried erasing and re-pairing. Same no charge issue. Spent an hour on the phone with Apple and there is nothing they can do. It is going back today for repair and a likely battery change. REALLY disappointing. The battery life was never fantastic but it wasn’t draining when it was off or not being used as more than a watch. So be careful doing this as you might also end up with a useless piece of tech that needs repair. Fortunately, my AppleCare warranty will cover it. But ... I’ll be without it for up to 15 business days and there goes my fitness streak. Makes me question having it at all - it’s a lot of fuss.

Yesterday evening I did the "unpair" "re-pair" process and restored from backup. Took longer than expected, but so far today the battery seems to be draining slower. I've had it on since 7am (3 1/2 hours) and sitting at 86%. Keeping my fingers crossed my watch (series 4) lasts all day.

Same issue - why have Apple not done a fix for this. My watch is useless until it returns to normal functionality. Turning off background app refresh has not made much difference. Did a 3 hour walk today and it was totally flat by the end.

Others have reported that the new watch faces could be the culprit.

As I noted waaaay above in this thread, when I unpaired > re-paired I actually got back a bunch of watchOS 6 faces that I had added and lost when I did my last unpair > re-pair, oddly.

I love GMT and Chrono Plus but am removing them for now. By doing so, my battery drain went from 40% in 6 hours to 9% over the same period.

I too have the apple watch 4 and have been experiencing these problems. I have turned off the battery management feature and have also unpaired and repaired from a backup today. So far the drain rate has not improved. It's so discouraging to essentially have a several hundred dollar paper weight on my wrist. Exercise definitely accelerates the drain.

Hi All....so I did the unpair/pair and restored from backup (series 4). No other changes or modifications. Battery is SOOOOOO much better. I've had it on all day (~8 hours) and am at 72% battery. This is very close (maybe "better") than what I had before the upgrade. Other than my time.....there has been very minimal impact to going through the process and would encourage anyone with this problem to try that for immediate resolution. :-)

I, too, did the unpair/pair from backup on Sept. 20th and it worked for my Series 4 with regard to battery drain. Unfortunately, a new problem cropped up as a result. My AW4 is no longer recognized by System Preferences Security and Privacy pane to unlock any of my Macs after sleep or to apply my logon PW when requested by double-clicking its side button. Several others have mentioned this bad outcome as well. I tried the steps of deleting certain files provided by samrog777--no joy for the AW4 although I was able to reconnect my Original Apple Watch running OS 4.3.2. I tried re-installing 10.15.6 Supplemental Update and no joy--AW4 doesn't work but AW0 does. What a pain!

Sorry, it was Gerhard Leeb who provided these steps that worked for him and one other poster:

The unpair/pair solution helped for me as well for the battery drain problem. The „unlock“ problem was solved for me using these steps:

Steps (follow at your own discretion)

1. Open "Keychain Access"
2. In "View", enable "Show Invisible Items"
3. Search for "Auto Unlock"
4. You should see a whole bunch of application passwords for "Auto Unlock: XXXX's ..."
5. Select all records and delete (this will reset/disable auto unlock on other Macs if you use multiple Macs)
6. Whilst still in "Keychain Access", search for "AutoUnlock" (no space)
7. There should be 4 entries for "tlk" "tlk-nonsync" "classA" "classC"
8. Select 4 records and delete (don't worry if they re-appear, the system repairs this automatically)
9. Open "Finder" and navigate to "~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock"
10. There should be two files "ltk.plist" and "pairing-records.plist"
11. Delete both files
12. Open "System Preferences" and try enabling auto unlock. You may need to enable it twice, the first attempt will fail.

After unpairing/pairing trick, the issue still persists. Still getting battery to 30% after 9 hours of wearing, not to include my 1 hour daily workout/exercise. I hope this gets fixed soon! Really annoying.

I’ve been experiencing the same issue on a series 4. Have tried the numerous ‘hack’ fixes people have suggested but still no improvements.

Looks as if battery performance was an issue in beta back in July

https://www.reddit.com/r/watchOSBeta/comments/hqf741/watchos_7_battery_life_fix/

we shouldn’t be looking at hacky fixes, their should either be a fix available or we should have the ability to roll back to the previous version.... but as standard Apple denies any culpability and his us the consumer/mugs are repeatedly eating a sh1te sandwich and are made to feel bad if we complain about the taste.

Sadly same problem here... I have a Watch Series 5. Before the update this was my usage:

I would wake up at 5:30 AM turn off, Theater Mode since I sleep with my watch and I ALWAYS have Always on Display on. (Battery 95%)

Go to work and listen to podcast on Spotify all day long while skipping 15 seconds ahead to avoid ads every so often, while answering texts every now and then. All this with Always on Display on. By the time I leave work around 3 PM my watch would usually have 40% battery or so.

Get home sit on my desk and put my watch to charge. (Battery 30-40%)

After updating to WatchOS 7, by 3 PM my battery is between 5-10%.

WTF Apple?

Me again--I fixed my problem with being unable in System Preferences>Security & Privacy to reconnect my AW4 to unlock my Macs after following @Gehard Lee's instruction set. In the Watch app, I went to General>Airplane Mode and toggled Bluetooh off and then back on, then went back and checkboxed my AW4 in System Prefere4nces>Security & Privacy--it finally worked!

after doing the unpair/pair procedure. Watch is still draining battery. Mind you my AW4 is only 1 year old with 98% battery health. Before the update (watchOs7) I could wear my watch regularly with a hour to hour and half workout and be at 25-30% from 630am to 1130 pm. After the update and doing the unpaid/pair trick? 8am-730pm with 30 min workout, watch is dead.

This needs to be fixed! I shouldn’t have to turn off features I regularly use to keep my battery life optimized. We pay 350-500$ And 800+ for premium versions for these watches! Surely, Apple is aware of these issues!???

Un-pairing and re-pairing fixed my Apple Watch Series 5. Still sent feedback to Apple. We should not have to do this. Luckily, their backup/restore process is pretty straightforward. I would recommend the re-pairing process.

Yes same for me down to zero at 5pm S4 watch with watch os 7. Unpaired then pairing will reformat the watch from backup takes 20 min but phone can be used while watch is backing up.. now still 90% plus at lunchtime back to normal performance.