Battery Drain since watchos 7.4

I had the exact issue on my Series 5 44mm after updating to 7.4.1. I tried unpairing it and re-paring it via the Watch app on my iPhone a couple times. The first time I restored the watch from backup. Since that didn't help, the second time I set it up as a new watch. I kept things super minimal and only installed 6 apps, but it didn't make a difference.

I finally fixed it by doing a Reset on the watch itself by going to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Erase all Content and Settings. After the watch reset, I paired it again and restored from backup. Now my watch is back to having around 60% charge remaining after a full day. In other words, I had to Reset/Erase the watch from the watch itself since unpairing from the Watch app on my iPhone did not help.

I find that this sometimes happens after updates, but it often clears up on it's own after a day or two. With this update, I had some battery drain on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday was fine.

When it gets very low, it will ask to go into "power reserve". You should turn that on, then charge it. Sometimes that's all it needs, and after it charges up again it will be back to normal.

If that doesn't work, you can try unpairing/repairing your watch and phone, but that's a last resort. It takes a while and is pain in the neck, so just waiting to see if the battery issue goes away by itself (or if there's another software update to fix it in a few days) is a better option at first.

I went through every troubleshooting process imaginable. I talked to tech support multiple times, they installed a special battery logging utility then sent the results to the engineering team and eventually sent the watch (Series 6) to Apple for analysis. They returned it and said everything was fine - it was not. It got so bad I was going from 100% to 20% or less in 2-4 hours. They finally replaced it with a brand new one and it started to do the same thing - not quite as bad but it went from 100% to 45% in the 6 hours I was sleeping. I didn't know what else to do so I started looking at the files it had logged using the utility and a bunch of them were named "podcast..." I thought that was strange because I don't use my watch for podcasts at all. I checked the settings for podcasts and it was set to "mirror iPhone" but I didn't have any episodes downloaded and all the shows in the list were unchecked to sync. So I changed the settings for the Podcast app, Music app, and Audiobooks app (none of which I've ever used on the watch nor had anything downloaded but I wanted to change every app in the "content" category) - all from "mirror my iPhone" to "Custom" and made sure notifications were off and no shows or anything else was selected. I have no idea why but that completely fixed the issue. I now am back to a solid 24 hours of battery life. If you're having issues it's worth a try. To be clear- when all these apps were set to "mirror my iPhone" none of these apps were downloading anything nor were any of the shows, albums, etc. selected. I never used any of these apps on my watch. Even though the net effect is the same - none of these apps were syncing anything nor downloading content - changing the setting to "custom" seemed to make all the difference.

After any IOS or OS update I find that a few forced restarts both your iPhone and your watch are needed.

( I do this twice with about an hour between)

First try force restarting your iPhone by whatever method your version calls for.  As soon as you see the Apple logo force restart your watch by holding in the crown and side button for 10 seconds till you see the Apple logo then release.  Log into your iPhone and wait for your watch to boot, then log into it.

My dad and I both had this issue for a few days until we did a full unpair and repair of our watches. Now it seems to be completely back to normal. I’m sorry if doing this does not fix the issue. Hopefully there will be a bug fix soon.

I am in contact with Apple support for 2 weeks now. Now it’s pending if they replace my watch, because they seem to close out the idea that this can me a software bug. But I tell you what. Yesterday in a forum I found the advice to deactivate the handwash Timer in the watch iPhone app. Since then battery is better than ever before

HI All

I want to share and thank Fernando_Roque for his suggestion as that resolved my issue. I disabled the Wifi and it does indeed return to normal for me. I turned it back on and used my second IOT network (which has an apple router) and it still seems to stay normal. However if i go to my home network using a cisco commerical router, I see the drain 5% in 10 mins.. I am sure this is the root cause. I am happy to just turn off Wifi and rely on BT or use the IOT network for now and try again in the next release!

Thanks all for your inputs and hopes everyone finds a fix!

So this is interesting - if the wifi is causing issues, and especially if it happens on one wifi network and not another one - then it may help to "forget" the wifi network and then reconnect. It's possible that the wifi connection information has become corrupted, and the watch is constantly trying to connect, failing, then trying again and again and again, etc. "Forgetting" the network and reconnecting will reset that network connection.

To forget the network on your watch, go into settings and (while connected to the problem network) tap the network name, then tap forget. For good measure, do that on your phone too - go into the phone settings, wifi and tap the "info" "i" icon next to the network name, then tap "forget this network" .

Then - on your phone - tap that network to re-connect, re-enter your wifi password,, and see if the problem goes away.

it might sound like magic thinking, did you activate it and then reactivate followed by a forced restart? I am asking, because if the hardware has not been harmed by the update, which is I thing is quite unlikely, it must be caused bei a process in the background that is running all the time. And yes, it must be a process Apple has access to, so it‘s unlikely it will be caused by third party apps.

Hello, I had the same problem on an apple watch SE and despite all the solutions found on differents forums, nothing worked. 

After deactivating the WiFi on the apple watch, the battery life is returned as before the update. 


Regards

I was having this problem last week. Drain was significant. Was going from 100% to less than 50% battery life in less than 2 hrs.

I did a bunch of things recommended on this thread, but things turned around a good bit after Apple did a remote diagnostic, which followed my powering down the watch for about 30 minutes; updating all the apps; turning off automatic downloads; turning off most "background app refresh".

I'm not sure which step did the trick, but I'm back to about 95% of what I had going before. It's been 2 hrs since I put on the watch today, and I'm only "down" to 88%. Extrapolating that out, I should have 14-16 hrs battery life today.

since the 7.4.1 update battery is now fine - i suspect that there might have been a bug fix in there too

I read somewhere to charge the watch to 100% and then turn it off & keep it off for 30 minutes. Now it works perfectly fine. My battery health still shows 80% and it was just at 87%.

if the watch is dead that fast try setting the watch into theatre mode which will reduce power consumption significantly

No problem, tell me if it's work for you. I disable wifi via Settings ->Wifi, not via Control Center