Battery issue of my Apple Watch Ultra

What I discovered on my ultra is if you use Spotify as your music app and Walkie Talkie app will cause this. I carplay on my way to work and when using spotify you can control anything on the app via watch, so after pausing music and doing regular day things spotify still runs in the background on the watch causing the battery drain. What I do now is end my drive and forceclose spotify on the watch "which did not have to do on prior model" and fixed my battery drain. Battery drain could be caused by latest update or simple things like unused apps still running in background, pretty annoying to have to force quitting after every drive.

I own Apple Watch Ultra and have religiously performed every update since the day I received the watch on launch day. And I've not had any battery drain issues on my Ultra after ANY update. Since you seem to be having an issue, you need to isolate what the issue may be. But a software update isn't the culprit. You may be using an app, which I don't use, which could be causing your issue.

One way to isolate issues is the restore the watch back to factory settings, and set up the watch NOT from backup. Then slowly add apps to the watch, which you use and watch battery usage as apps are added back.

An Apple Watch Ultra battery is rated to up to 36 hours, so something is running in the background.

I would force restart your watch to clear anything out:

Press and hold BOTH the power and digital crown buttons at THE SAME TIME. Keep holding both buttons, past when the screen goes dark and keep holding until you see the Apple Logo, then let go.

Sign back in when prompted and hopefully, whatever was running will have been killed.

I charged it to 100% last night and I’m at 36% now and yesterday it died on my after 1 day. I’m super confused as I thought this battery was supposed to last a lot longer. I’m very disappointed and don’t understand.

Force Restart your Apple Watch and see if battery life returns to normal:

Press and hold BOTH the digital crown and elongated power buttons at the SAME TIME. Keep holding them both until the screen goes dark and keep holding them until you see the Apple Logo, then let go. When prompted, sign back in.

Make sure you charge your watch at night when you sleep. Use it for a day and let us know if things improve.

16 hours is very close to the 18 hours expected life, even though you were not actively using it.

I would recommend you always charge up at night unless you want to use it for sleep monitoring. Iphones and Watches, charge all night every night to encourage optimised charging to 100%

I would restart both the Watch and the iPhone, unpair the Watch, ensure all your apps on the iPhone are updated, remove any VPN or security apps (not needed on Apple devices and can use battery via traffic to the security websites) then pair it again.

 Unpair and erase your Apple Watch

and then

Set up your Apple Watch

 If no better you may want to unpair then set up without restoring the backup.

If you've completed that troubleshooting and the issue is still not resolved, Contact Support.

Click here > Contact - Official Apple Support

or phone numbers 

Click here > Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support

Resources:

Allow a couple of hours: 

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch – Apple Support (UK) 

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support 

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support 

Set up your Apple Watch – Apple Support (UK)

Your troubleshooting over 3 different models suggests it is your SOFTWARE in Watch AND iphone that is incompatible.

What I would do is

• Unpair and erase the Watch
• Backup the iphone
• Restore iphone to factory settings
• Set up the iphone as new without restoring the backup. Install only your essential email accounts, no extra software, no social media
• Pair the Watch to the iphone
• Run them both like that for 24 hours and see how long the battery lasts.

Only when that test is over can you repeat the first three actions then set up the phone but restoring the backup this time.

If the Watch lasts longer the first time than the second time then QED

Walkie-Talkie is one of the first things to check with rapid battery usage, you are right, and a quick view of the control panel is always a good place to start.

However on both Watch and iPhone, force quitting all streaming apps, particularly the problematic Spotify, is recommended by me but I must say not all advisers. They are designed to run in the background! How to force quit apps on Watches is not often described here. There is general advice never to force quit apps, but in my opinion the advice does not apply to streaming apps. The misbehavior is as much to do with the app developers as it is with Apple.

Finally the widely reported claim "This only happened since the last update" is in 90% or cases untrue, we just didn't notice the problem before and the last thing we remember doing is the update.

For completeness - how to Force quit Watch app

With the app on the watch screen, press and hold side button until the Medical ID and SOS screen appears.

Then press and hold Digital Crown til the clock face appears

Or

if the side button is set up to show recents, press it briefly, find the app, swipe it left, tap the big red X

i bought my first ultra 6 days ago. Took it out of the box set it up put it on. Within 6 hours it was drained. Charged it fully again and went to bed. In the middle of the night it was day. I was ******. 36 hours my ***. Next day I sent it back. Got another one. Same thing!!!! Really Apple? $800! For lemon after lemon. I’ve had 10 Apple Watches. Never had this problem. I use it sparingly. Don’t listen to music. Really use it for time and temperature

I have had the same problems. One day my series 5 apple watch started to die more quickly. I thought, well, it is about 3 years old, maybe it is the battery. I traded it in on a series 8 apple watch. Within days, the watch would die after just 6 - 8 hours. Took it back and got an Ultra. Within days it was dead after just 5 hours. Took it back. I am now on my second Ultra. I have removed all but the apps that came with the watch. I have done all of the watch tweaks to conserve battery like adjusting the brightness, only on when I raise my wrist, etc. I have worked with support several times. They installed a "profile" on my watch. So far they find nothing wrong, oh, other than the battery doesn't last near 18 hours. The best performance I get is if every day when the batter gets low, I power it off, then back on and then charge. Still not near 18 hours. I'd love to know what has happened. I believe it was a software change around the first of January 2023. Before that I never had these problems.

The answer turns out to be pretty simple: Unpair and erase the Watch; re-pair it. Fixed! Done! I don't know why this works or why there are so many useless posts on it (from Apple!) But that's it.

Now, when I got my watch, as with many others, the first thing it wanted was to update the OS. Maybe that update process does something funny.

I just think Apple needs to make that a part of the instructions: after successful pairing, please unpair and re-pair your watch.

Please READ ALL the answers here. They are not from Apple (who rarely post here) they are from people like me and lobsterghost1 who have many years of experience on the forum

The last poster TX-Bill has already tried your remedies and on three different Watches.

It pays to read through the thread before coming in with remedies already discusses.

But yes that is the second troubleshooting thing to do after restarting both devices.

No way in **** it runs 36 hours without a charge unless you have nothing running or it in low power mode at all times which then does not accurately reflect your energy burned. Also- does NOT keep accurate stand hours or flights of steps since last update Mar 23

Sounds like you need to create your own thread. We could help but this thread us done.

In your new thread please post

The Model of Watch

The OS it is running, eg OS9.3.1 (Settings, General, About)

The model of the paired iPhone eg iPhone 11

The iOS it is running eg iOS16.3.1 (Settings General, About)

Tell us what is happening, what do you see, are there any error messages.