Battery Drain since watchos 7.4

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.

My series 6 Apple Watch has been running out of battery in 3-4 hours since the update from earlier this year. I'm at 7.3.3 now, so I'm guessing it started around 7.3. I'm not even sure if it is running out of battery, as it seems to shutdown before noon (start wearing around 8am), but when I put it on a charger, it often will show about 50% battery after it reboots on the charger.

I have tried un-pairing, and re-pairing. I've tried reseting as a new watch. I've deleted all running apps. Nothing seems to fix this issue. Trying to figure out how to engage a genius on this issue right now.

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.

I don’t use this feature, too (iPhone SE 2020). I also turned off WiFi, but this didn’t fix the Problem. Battery of my S3 is still draining fast 100-0% in 13 hrs (before updating to 7.3/7.4/7.4.1 the battery made it up to 48hrs and more. Also the battery health decreased in 1 week from 98% to 91%. It lost 2% in a year, now 7% in a week… this can’t meant to be normal. Still waiting for apple support (Germany) calling back.

full at 6.01 a.m.

empty at 8.28 p.m.

Yes! I have the Series 4. Yesterday it was at 10% around 7PM and today it was at 10% at 2PM. I just updated a few days ago to 7.4. It seems to be getting worse. I charge to 100% every night and it usually has at least 50% left by 8/9PM. Going to try a force restart and see if that helps.

I also have the same problem with my series 4 watch.. After 7.4 battery is draining at approx 15% per hour.. I would easily get 1 day and just top up when i shower each morn. In the past, unpair, would typically fix the issue. I have tried to unpair and restore from backup and setup as a new watch and still no good.

Fully charged at 10pm. basically go into sleep/DND mode and wake up at 7am in the warning zone with 7%. This is doing nothing but sleeping with all the notifications basically turned off due to DND mode.

Installed the new 7.4.1 update lastnight before bed.. charged it full but still down to less than 10% when i woke up this morning.

What to do? Any other suggestions?

I also have a major battery drain issue. Just tried un-pairing and re-pairing but the increased battery drain is persisting. I’ve just turned off the “always on” screen to save some power, but that’s not ideal since, you know, I want the always on screen

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this issue - my Apple Watch 3 is being charged overnight and within an hour of going on my wrist it is going from 100% to 9%.

Interestingly there is a 70meg update to 7.4.1 just come out - hopefully Apple know the issue and will fix in this update

for me 7.4.1 hasn't change. I am well beyond 48 hours mark and still drains very quickly. full at 10pm but down to 20% when i wake up from sleep at 7am. it would normally only drop 10-15% in that time.

In fact idk y a watch needs security updates but anyway. My series 6 is on watchOS 7.4 and it was at 62% before sleep last night. Juz picked it up and it dropped to a low of 28% but I didn’t use it overnight…

I’m tired of seeing this cycle happening again and again every other update. Apple could u please improve the quality of your updates. It takes me forever to ponder before updating.

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.

Hi, I have Apple Watch 4 with LTE which I've bought 12/2020 - so half a year, battery should be good right?

And it was. It lasted all day, woke up at 7am and it lasted 20h with some percent left. That was cool.

Until 7.3.3 - 7.4 update, can't really tell which one as I have been home under qurantine as these were installed at my watch.

After these I wake up at 7am and my battery is 30% after 8h when Im leaving workplace. With this time it's really useless...

Tried unpairing and pairing, turining off refreshing apps, autoplay and other protips that i came around on web. None works.

Im using it with iPhone 12 mini. I've seen theories that this can be cause by some processes going on iPhone and people that have worked this issues for some time with their iphones beeing reset (and watch not), but anyway this is sad.

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

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.

This update is horrible!

Two weeks ago, when I talked to the support, the result of their diagnostics was battery health of 98% (after 1 year still pretty good). Last sunday, when I checked it again, I was more than surprised, because now the health status is just 91%. 7% in less than a week. I really can‘t imagine, that this is normal… But I‘m sure that this Update is going to kill my S3 from inside out.

Sadly my warranty ran out in February 21 and I missed it to get Apple Care for my watch, so I won‘t get a replacement.

Next time I‘ll don‘t do updates before doing Research about the update…

This is so annoying and time consuming 😑