watchOS 7 Battery Drain

I’ve done all the tricks including the hokey-pokey. My battery is still below the 18hrs advertised for an S5LTE, so off to the store I’ll go. Unfortunately I’ll be 15 days PAST my warranty expiring when I get to the store.

It definitely has something to do with a runaway process. Look at Settings > General > Usage in the Apple Watch app. You’ll see standby time and usage time. I’m willing to bet that most who are not seeing battery issues have a ratio of around 1-2hrs usage for every 10hrs standby. Mine is consistently around ~50% even with AoD turned off. This would mean to me some process is still running, and unfortunately there is no detailed usage on the watch to determine the process.

My Watch app on my iPhone 11 for my AW4 shows Usage = 1hr-1min and Standby = 10hrs-7min like DaveH noted and my AW4 Battery Usage is back to normal following installing WatchOS 7, an Unpair/Pair with Backup and WatchOS 7.01 including re-starts of my iPhone and AW4. I suspect that runaway process(es) DaveH mentioned may be the culprit for those that other things haven't work. One thing to try is to uninstall all non-Apple apps on your Watch via the Watch app on your phone, then shutdown and restart the iPhone and Apple Watch. I have only 3 non-Apple apps (Cardiogram, Heart Analyzer and Remote) installed on my AW4 but there are 4 dozen listed on my iPhone as available to install that are not.

I have upgraded my AW 4 Nike 44 mm to watchOS 7.1 beta 2.

In the first hour it looked OK, and afterwards continued to drain the battery with near to 15% per hour.

I haven't try to reset my iPhone (iPhone 8 iOS 14.0.1) together with the watch. I tried few times watch reset, turn off watch and phone for 5 min, turn on flight mode, and nothing impact the battery drain speed.

The battery health is 91%.

This morning the result is 12 min usage 1:56 hour standby, battery 77%.

My latest test is disabling Hand Off.

Settings > General > Hand Off

I’ve noticed my iPad showing apps in the dock when my Watch gets a notification for an app I have on both my phone and my iPad. It even shows the watch icon in the corner of the app icon indicating where it came from.

So I’ll start next with that.

After trying everything but the kitchen sink, I called Apple support again, this time on the iMac side, not watch support. We did not go through (again) any of the steps listed in your post, although we double checked that my watch and iMac were version-compatible and the settings were in order. In the security/privacy setting the tech had me set my frequency for requiring a password to immediately instead of after 5 minutes. We deselected and reselected disable automatic login. The iMac found the watch, I did a restart and logged in with my password. All the settings were intact upon boot up, and when I tested using the watch it worked perfectly.

It is hard to say what the situation would have been if I had not gone through the keychain process and disabling/re-enabling bluetooth before changing the settings. For this instant, it appears to be working.

I checked my battery health this morning and it is down to 96% from 100% on the day I installed the watch update. This makes me nervous.

My battery usage is pretty good now, but I am not using any of the new features, have turned off a lot of background processes in addition to the re-pair as a new watch, updating to 7.0.1 and turning both the phone and watch off as has been described by others.

Thanks to everyone for their input. I would still be a square one without it!

I have the audio noise meter on all the time and it does not affect the battery dramatically. Many have reported switching various apps off but I do not find that has much affect. My battery is fine at the end of the day. It is now 17:17 here in the UK and my battery is at 64%. We are all using the same software release and mostly the same version of the watch and the variation in problem reports about the battery is odd. We should all have the same issues. A simple switch off and then on of the iPhone, and the Watch ought to be sufficient and/or pair and unpair. My sons, one in Australia and the other in the UK, who also have Apple watches and followed these basic instructions have had no problems. I have followed them on an Apple Watch 4 and the 6 and thereafter no issues.

Apple just posted a new Watch software update 7.0.2 which they think will solve the battery drain problem.

I am downloading it now. It should improve battery life even if you have paired and unpaired your watch.

Here's my experience as previously noted. The first graph shows average battery readings by time of day before 7.0 (blue), after 7.0 (red), after unpairing and pairing again (orange), after updating to 7.0.1 (green) and after 7.0.2. The second graph is a screen shot last night after the third day on v.7.0.2. I'm getting slightly better performance under v.7.0.2 but YMMV....

As mentioned in this forum by others. Power off iPhone, power of Watch, wait a few minutes, power on iPhone, when fully on and unlocked power on watch.

Some have found it helped to unpair and repair as well. Also for some they have found the issue goes given time but annoying nonetheless.

With swimming (indoor pool) I have found the heart rate sensor does not always take readings. It is not a hardware issue but I think something in IOS 7 has reduced the sensitivity.

Thanks Sveto1. I've updated to iOS 14.1 on my iPhone 11 and WatchOS 7.0.2 on my AW4 and still have the Mac Unlocking problem for my Mac Pro (Late 2013) running macOS 10.15.7 but not my Mac mini (2014) running the latest beta of macOS 11.0. My AW0 running WatchOS 4.3.2 never had the Unlocking problem with either Mac nor the battery drain problem, of course.

After the Unpair/Pair from Backup procedure back with iOS 14.0 and WatchOS 7.0, the severe battery drain in my AW4 stopped and did not return with iOS 14.0.1 or 14.1 of WatchOS 7.0.1 or 7.0.2. Gerhardt Leeb's procedure with an added Bluetooth off/on initially fixed the AW4 Unlocking problem but it mysteriously reappeared in a couple of days for my Mac Pro but not for my Mac mini, the only software difference being the macOS version in the Mac mini. All subsequent attempts to fix the Unlocking problem with my AW4 and Mac Pro have failed.

I've concluded that I need to wait for either macOS 11.0 or as you point out WatchOS 7.1 unless you are also running a beta of macOS 11.0 on your Mac.

I got an Apple Watch a few days ago and immediately noticed that after I stated using it my iPhone 11 Pro battery completely drained by early evening - it used to last until 2am or later, I didn’t have to worry about it. I tried the Apple recommended solution last night (unpair, factory reset, etc) and am still having the problem. I think I have to return the watch and go back to Fitbit because this is crazy and has clearly been a known issue for a very long time.

Also, Apple, I will not be recommending anyone I know buy a watch.

Unlocking my Mac Pro (late 2013) with my AW4 is working again using the instructions posted here a month ago by Gerhardt Leeb involving deleting files in Keychain Access and the ~Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock folder as I did a month ago. BUT this time I emptied the Trash and rebooted before going to Preferences/Security & Privacy and checking the AW4 box to use it for unlocking. Weird gremlins but let's see how long it continues to work this time...

Its a tragedy with the devices, I figured out during the recent days that the activities are responsible for draining the battery much more than ever before. I used the acivities about 250 to 300 min everyday, at midnight it was still at 8 to 15%, now after 1,5 hours activities it dropped from nearly 100% to 40% and I have to recharge in the middle of the day. Never happen before.

I have tried it all. Unpair, pair. Restart, wipe clean. Restore from 3 different backups, start as new watch. Even restored my phone. Did hard resets on both devices. Spoke with apple they found nothing wrong with my watch after diagnostic. I can’t get through a whole day without charging. Add activity and it’s even worse. I have to bring my watch charger to work now. It’s sad. As the new phones drop I’m looking to other brands for my upgrade and watch needs sadly.