Huge battery drain WatchOS 7 - Series 5 Apple Watch

***Unpairing and re-pairing seemed to do it for Series 6***

Prior to unpair/pair - I reduced notifications, turned off hand washing, made sure 'sleep' was off, etc. I already had 'tight' restrictions on push, notifications, etc and could always get > 24h if needed, and would not make it 14 hours after the watchOS update. Heavy Strava and GPS use, BTW.

And, seriously. I skip ever post that starts with "Same thing". If you want to detail how your trial is the same or better - post to your personal blog. I'm here for answers and diagnostics, not therapy. Not judging, just remember to support improvement, not complain.

My watch used to last about 16 hours and that's with heavy use. I unpaired and reset my watch. The battery was 57% before reset and after re-pairing came back at 78%. So far it appears to have done the trick.

I too had the battery drain issue and have lost large chunks of health and activity data. For example, now I only have heart rate data back to February of this year but have been collecting it for 5 years...

A re-pair solved the battery drain issue on my watch, but I have not wiped and restored from back-up my phone - the recommended method of trying to recover the lost data.

Also, my activity data on any given day will show, for example, 13 hours standing, but the bar chart will show something different (see screenshot). Other data is missing or inconsistent too. With WatchOS7/iOS14 there certainly seems to be a major issue with this. I had hoped 14.1 would fix it but that hasn't happened.

If your battery drain issue is reliably repeatable. Try turning off on your watch (in Settings) Bluetooth and Cellular data and then going for a run without your phone - see if it still drains the battery. This is nothing more than a random theory, but I wonder if it is still trying to communicate with your phone even though your phone is not with you...

See my message before. You have to unpair/reset. Solution from apple...

Good suggestion. I went out for a 3k walk this morning, and turned wifi and mobile data off before I went. I checked the battery about halfway into the walk, and had only lost 4%. Wifi had turned itself back on, but mobile data was still off. I turned mobile data back on to see what would happen, and by the time I got home my battery had drained completely.

This is a big issue that wasn’t present before the update. I used to be able to be out for an hour without my phone, tracking a run, listening to a podcast or audio book via AirPods, and the battery would still last til the end of the day. Whatever has changed in this update to drain the battery like this needs to be fixed.

You did a reset on your apple watch?

Exact same issues here since the WatchOS7 update on a series 5. I have found that unpair/re-pair fixes the issue for a certain amount of time (first try about 2 days, second try just 1 day, most recent attempt about 6 days) but the problem returns. All seemed good today , battery level about 78% at 2pm, then suddenly at 5pm I got a low battery notification. No workouts running on the watch, and I have previously removed all non-apple apps from the watch. Notifications at a minimum.

I have never in the past had any issues with updates but this one (watchOS7) is dreadful! Truly shameful of Apple to be burying their head in the sand and just recommending a complete reset of the phone and watch (which is what I am currently in the process of doing - I have not so far reset the phone, this is my first try of that step, but I hold out little hope that it will be any better).

Quite frankly the watch is starting to be more of a burden than of any use, wasting much of my time repeatedly resetting the device to try and get the battery life to where it was prior to this shambolic update.

Apple needs to acknowledge this widespread issue and release a fix as soon as possible, if not sooner!

My Series 5 Apple watch just did the same thing! I had worn it MUCH LESS today than usual. It popped a message saying it only had 10% battery left! This watch will be one year old in December and I have never had it go low battery even on days when I have worn it a lot longer. It is a HUGE battery drain. I updated it to Watch OS 7 about 48 hours ago so it seems obvious to me that the battery drain is connected to my update.

I had enabled the hand washing app but didn't find it useful (it thinks all sorts of things are me washing my hands) so I disabled that today.

The watch also has told me repeatedly, since I updated, that my Apple password is incorrect. That is not true. The watch has suddenly started popping a message that I need to supply the password for iCloud. But when I do that, it says the password is incorrect.

Unpairing then pairing again does not solve this problem. I've done this twice, but my watch battery is drained a lot faster than it did before wOS7. I even have the always-on feature turned off, and my battery needs recharging at least once a day. Before I could go 2 full days without charging. I've only had my Series 5 watch for 5 months. Another problem is that I often cannot swipe down to see notifications, or swipe up to get the control panel. This was a problem they fixed in wOS6 that has returned in wOS7.

Hey guys, unpairing and repairing my watch did the trick! Back to normal

I have turned off sleep and hand washing and still below 20% by battery by 5pm. This never happened before and only did a quick 30 minute workout. I have the watch series 4 and hope Apple gets this fixed quickly or back to by Omega!

This is my issue exactly! I even wiped my phone and restored from back up as well. The watch was fine after the 1st day and then it went back to dying crazy fast. Heck I'm not even being notified at times that its low... it just turns off. It is beyond frustrating.

I’m still having this problem after an un-pair/re-pair/restore. I’ve restored from backup and set up my watch as new; still having the problem. And through it all I’ve lost all my health and activity data. My watch seems ok as long as my iPhone is around. If I go out for a run without my phone - which was the reason I got the watch - the battery drains stupidly fast. This morning it was 92% before I went out, and about 12 minutes into the run my watch died completely.

It ***** to experience this problem after an update of OS7.1 on my watchSeries5, even after unpair and repair,Ba3 drains fast and even hours of charging to 100% keeps longer...

Apple needs a fast resolution to solve this ASAP or else the watch is a big #WASTE!

pls a better OS to solve this

I have a battery drain issue as well but it is even more odd. I have already paired and unpaired and it made no difference. I can track the longest bike rides either on the Fitness app or Strava and it is fine, no issue with the battery but as soon as I track a run I cannot go over half an hour. It goes to about 70% and then it goes to 10% within seconds or it just switches off completely. The longest I can track a run on a fully charged watch is 40 mins. It is the same on Strava or the Fitness app. Does anybody else have this issue? All other activities are fine just running it seems to have an issue with.