watchOS 9 battery drain

No, this is an issue with the new watchOS or the iOS 16, it's happening to me with the battery health at 84%.

Last week the watch was working normally (charging it every night with around 45% of battery) now I have to charge it twice per day, the battery flies.

Hi Guys,

I'm facing similar drainage issues recently.... I have a iWatch 6 with a battery healt of 99% . Yesterday nightI fully charged it .. i set it to sleep mode and the battery DRAINED IN 8 hrs!! the OS 9.0 was updated when it was reliased .. this battery issue just appreared out of the blue. FYI - I have NOT installed any new app since.

I'm looking for your advice/help.

Appreciate it, Thanks, Tamas

Hi here, I have been encountering the exact same problem for 2 weeks but have finally found a way that stops the battery drain for me.

I'm using Apple Watch Ultra but started encountering a serious battery drain issue starting from last week, battery evaporates at a 10% hourly rate on idle state even when my low power mode is on. Some solutions would suggest repairing or factory reset, but none of those actually worked for me. I had to use my AppleCare for an exchange, but the second watch suffers from the same nightmare.

After reading: apple.com/uk/batteries/maximizing-performance/

Disabling Bluetooth on your iPhone increases the battery drain on your Apple Watch. For more power-efficient communication between the devices, keep Bluetooth enabled on iPhone.

I noticed that as long as I keep the bluetooth of my iPhone on, the battery situation will be normal. (now at ~1% per hour instead of 10%)

Personally I feel that there is a problem with WatchOS 9.1 when dealing with the no-bluetooth situation, but I'd suggest to give this a try if you are suffering from the same issue & also have a habit to keep the iPhone bluetooth disabled.

Hope this helps somebody.

After discussing with Apple Support, I've found that battery recalibration for AW4/AW5 started with the release of WatchOS 9: Apple Watch Battery and Performance - Apple Support. However, the rapid decrease of battery health started for me with WatchOS 9.2 update. Since I still get 1 day of usage after full charge, after unpair / pair Apple Watch, I think I don't need to change the battery for now.

Battery Capacity Reporting on Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5

After updating to watchOS 9, your Apple Watch Series 4 or Series 5 will recalibrate and then estimate its maximum battery capacity more accurately.

I set my watch to Low Power Mode. I still have the functionality that I normally use. See Use Low Power Mode on your Apple Watch - Apple Support. Battery drain could be less than before I installed 9.3.

This is an issue I noticed immediately after upgrading my Apple Watch 4 (battery health at 94%) to Watch OS 9. Without particularly using the watch, it drops at the rate between 10% per hour to 1% per 2 minutes. But there are also good days when it drains just as Watch OS 8. I've done quite a few tests without a proper profiling tool and here are some findings:

1. There are bad days and good days. Good days would be like running Watch OS 8, draining batter like before. No need for Low Power mode.
2. It's not related to hardware that we have control of: Wifi, BT, Cellular Data, etc. These don't impact the battery drain issue
3. It's not related to Watch Face. In particular, the Noise complication isn't the major cause of the issue. Other complications afaik don't read any sensors and should consume less energy. I haven't looked into data refresh model of watch complications development but my guess is there's an interval for data refresh. Drawing the complications won't consume much energy either. I've tested a wide range of watch faces including watch faces without complications, still drain like crazy.
4. Heart Rate Monitor draws energy, but it doesn't look like it takes more in Watch OS 9 than 8. The plotting looks the same as before.
5. Heating up. Watch becomes warmer than usual, and the temperature difference is noticeable. This is usually a sign of CPU utilization. Without a profiler, I can't really say what is running but this seems to be the major cause.
6. Low Power mode helps, most of the time. Apparently, the mode disables the heart rate monitor, it also reduces background app refresh, according to Apple, "Background app refresh happens less frequently". Whatever process Low Power mode shuts down would be the root cause for the battery drain issue. However, I also noticed that if the music control is up (when you are listening to music on your phone), you get a chance of screwing it up again, even in Low Power mode.

Work around of the issue:

1. Turn Low Power mode on, let it run for a while and turn it off, hoping the processes that were shut down don't start.
2. Pray it's a good day
3. Bring a charger.
4. Unpair and re-pair. I haven't tried myself but I guess it might help.

Some more observations....

1. I have seen that the battery drain does not happen if I am away from home and not connected to my wifi network.
2. When I am home, the wifi connection seems to drop (if I go into the wifi settings, I don't see a connected network) or sometimes, the watch will be connected to a different SSID than my phone (I have multiple SSIDs being published by my routers/access points - the routers are in "bridge"mode). In both cases, I have noticed that the battery drains rapidly.
3. If I manually switch my Apple Watch to the primary network that my phone is connected to, I don't see the battery drain.

There appears to be no rhyme or reason why the watch is switching or losing the wifi the network. It will be connected to the primary SSID when I put it on the charger at night and in the morning it will be connected to a different SSID (the watch will also be pretty warm when I take it off the charger). Anyone else seeing this?

Hope this will help some of you fix the battery issue:

1. ensure your bluetooth on you iPhone is always on (Apple mentioned that turning off bluetooth will consume power faster)
2. agree to the updated T&C

• Settings > Suggestions (or whatever that is under your AppleID w/ profile pic)
• Tap on the updated T&C and accept it

I constantly encounter battery drain, until I noticed a pattern. I always get fast battery depletion (at 1% every 5-10 minutes) after switching my apple account's region, then I realized once I have accepted the new T&C after a region change, the draining problem will stop immediately.

Not saying this is a guaranteed resolution, but worth giving it a try, especially on an Ultra model.

I’m also getting serious battery drain during workouts since the upgrade to 9.1. Today my battery went from 77% at the beginning of a run to dead within 10 minutes. Last week I could’ve run a half-marathon on that charge.

My battery health is at 81%. This is not a battery issue.

Ok, so shutting off cellular on my run worked for me. I had also shut off bluetooth and used the native fitness tracker rather than workoutdoors. I lost about 18% on a nine mile run. The reason I think it’s cellular is because when I ended my run, my battery was at 58%, and then I turned on cellular and my watch IMMEDIATELY died. Didn’t even have an opportunity to turn Bluetooth back on.

I will try again tomorrow using Workoutdoors.

This is getting ridiculous. Watch charged 100% (for the 2nd time today) at 4:30 PM, 63% by 5:37 PM, 60% by 5:41 PM, 50% by 6:00 PM. Screenshots are attached. I am running ONLY Apple stuff, background updates have been reduced to minimal. The Apple Watch is a Series 8 purchased in November. Is there a "lemon law" for watches? The irony is that I sold my Series 4 because this was happening (after WatchOS 9) because Apple's Repair Center said that there was "nothing wrong with it" and I thought that the watch was the problem.

This is terrible, is happening to me since last week, out of the blue and without any change on my watch (the only change was the new OS).

I have tried everything: unpairing, pairing, setting up as new... nothing have worked so far.

I'm very disappointed.

No, this is a watchOS 9 issue. With the same battery health I was getting 50% battery before going to bed and I was usually doing at least workout / walk a day. Now even without working out the watch is draining the battery so fast that I have to recharge it twice a day. Something is not working here :)

Same with an Apple Watch 6. Before watch os 9, last week, one charge per day was fine, now I need 4 or 5 with the same use. If I reboot the watch it works fine one day, and the next day goes back to need 4 or 5 charges per day.

Update. After unpairing my Apple Watch SE and setting it up as a new watch the battery life seems back to normal. I will keep an eye on it and I will post an update in the next 2 weeks. This seems anyway to have solved the issue for me. I would give it a shot and see if this can help.