Battery drain with watches 9.2

Just reset your watch and make sure to turn off background app refresh and walkie talkie from the settings. I have the apple watch 4 and this is happening since a few months that whenever I update my watch , it drains the battery to zero in a couple of hours. As of now resetting it has worked for me.

justa side note, but even if this workaround keeps your watch running, it’s still a terrible user experience and Apple needs to fix it.

apps are designed with the assumption that they will be running in the background, and a ton of app features will simply stop working without it. :[

If you have a ton of apps in the Watch may use a ton of battery. I like to keep mine lean.

It was just as likely the restart that was the fix. Making two changes at the same time gives no conclusion about either.

Restrictions on background refresh can be selective if one or two apps must have it

Batteries - Maximising Performance - Apple

Same for series 7

i did the update early in the morning before I start my day. It is drained down to 30% with normal use that would have it to 75%+ before the update every other per day. Same workouts, walking etc

initialy I thought to give it another day before posting but it became so bad I came here to see if anyone else is experiencing this and saw your thread.

I upgraded to watch os 9.2. My watch immediately started draining in minutes. It used to last all day. I have wiped the watch and re-paired. I have reset phone and watch. I have turned off background app refresh, walkie talkie and everything else possible. Nothing is working. It still drains quick. In addition, contacts is 8 gb on watch -- what the heck is going on. I don't have that many contacts!

Definitely a bug in 9.2. Is anyone from Apple monitoring this forum? It seems to be a widespread problem.

Help appreciated. Ideally a patch. Thanks

Yep, rubbish isn't it!

The only thing I found that worked, is unpair your watch from the iphone, then when you restore DONT use a backup (so set it up as if it's a new watch).

You'll have to set everything back up again on the watch (faces, alarms ect), but if you use it for tracking (achievements ect), then that's stored in the Health app.

The re-boot phone and watch trick only works for a few days.

Apple definitely need to sort this out!

Thanks Will

I did try setting up as new watch and it still has gone back to draining. However, I will try again and see if I can get this to work...

Apple has always been pretty ruthless about not properly supporting older products but I think the Apple Watch 4 is fairly recent and might even still be sold... Anyway, a new watch might be the only solution :-(

Try re-booting the phone, then the watch when the apple icons showed on the phone.

mines been playing up since the update. I re-paired as new yesterday after reading that some one spoke to apple support who recommended that fix.

Fingers crossed it works (until the next update 🤣🤦‍♂️)

Check for damaged battery...

Charge the watch to 100% at bedtime.

Take it off charge,

Turn it OFF - hold in side button til you see the sliders and tap the tiny off button, top right. Confirm off with slider. 

In the morning turn it back on and it should be at least 95%. If NOT then the battery is damaged.

Glady8927 wrote:

Just reset your watch and make sure to turn off background app refresh and walkie talkie from the settings. I have the apple watch 4 and this is happening since a few months that whenever I update my watch , it drains the battery to zero in a couple of hours. As of now resetting it has worked for me.

Reset in what way? Forced restart or unpair and pair again?

_kxdyn wrote:

justa side note, but even if this workaround keeps your watch running, it’s still a terrible user experience and Apple needs to fix it.

apps are designed with the assumption that they will be running in the background, and a ton of app features will simply stop working without it. :[

Turn them off individually.

Any apps that have complications will auto-refresh whatever the settings so if you have a lot of faces with a variety of complications you may not be able to turn many refreshes off.

Reset is reset and restart is completely different. So unpair and reset the watch. Then set it up as a new watch. Another thing I realised is that even if you dont do anything let it drain for a few cycles . It will fix itself after 5 days or so . I think the watch does a lot of things in the background when you install a new os version. So wait it out guys . It will fix itself .

Well, have done this twice in two days with Apple Watch 7 and WatchOS 9.2 but did not solve for me. Based on recommendation, I am setting up my watch for the third time but *NOT* Restoring from Backup but setting up as new watch. I will look for the Background App Refresh and Walkie-Talkie settings to make sure they are off.

I have a Series 7 and experienced same issues since 9.2 came out. I unpaired and re-paired 4 times (NOT from backup) and finally gave up w/ the expectation that 9.3 would hopefully fix the issue. 9.3 has come out, I've updated, restarted, reset and finally unpaired, re-paired another 2 times since and still no slowing down this battery drain. I just spoke w/ Genius Bar who ran diagnostics and said they can't see anything wrong w/ the watch but to do further software-based tests it will cost $430. Does anyone have a cheaper solution? I've tried everything I know + have learned from this board. If I'm going to spend $430 JUST for diagnostics on a Series 7 I might as well get a new watch. Is the Series 8 experiencing similar issues?

I would not pay that amount of money either only for them to poke around in the dark trying to figure out the problem. I had the same suggestion form the Genious bar a few of weeks ago. Here is what worked for me: whilst I shared in January my work-around, which referred to 9.2, the battery drain occurred again after upgrading to 9.3. Same as the previous time, I unpaired my Watch, then re-paired it, but using my backup, and then deleted all the excess watch faces. Like the first time around somehow my watch 6 faces were multiplied within the Watch App on my iPhone (but not on the Watch itself). After deleting the excess ones my battery life is back. I feel pretty confident now that my trick has worked two times.