Battery charge plunges after watchOS 9.5

Hard / Restart of iPhone and Apple Watch 8 on my side helped to improve.

Have you restarted your watch after completion of the software update? Do this as a routine.

Restart your Apple Watch – Apple Support (UK)

You should also make it an absolute habit to restart your watch after EVERY WatchOS update.

I'll also ask if you restarted your watch after you updated it? It should be standard to do after a WatchOS update.

A quick update to this thread: I have unpaired the Watch Ultra, reset and restarted many times unfortunately, and then paired it back, battery works great again as usual.

It’s the software for sure. If anyone has to disable all the Applewatch features to get half the promised battery life…”I don’t think so”.

it’s a software bug. We should all escalate it to apple.

This is not the best in class Apple design.

Never settle.

My apologies, I'm on WatchOS 9.5.1, not 9.4.1. I updated two days ago. And as is often the case, it can take a couple days for your watch to go through all the reindexing of data. So now two days later, my battery life is rather remarkable.

Thanks my friend. Yes, a restart and then a forced restart. I restart all my devices several times a week. It is my recommended first step go to for all friends and family when they have issues. I’m hoping in another day or 2, I will get my full and usual consumption ratios back. No panic yet as it’s only been 36 hours since the update.

If a restart nor a forced restart does the trick, the next step is exactly what you did and that is to unpair and set it up again, which usually resolves issues. I'm glad its now working as expected again.

Could you post your overnight drain test screenshot please.

My ultra is doing the same thing. It’s not his watch. This happened w 9.3. It got better with subsequent releases and now it’s back.

Charge it all night every night.

Ditto, Dubie. The update is the only thing that has changed since my watch battery became a 1/2 day battery. I have an old watch, but I just paid Apple $80 to replace the battery a few months ago.

Let's get this fixed!

Hi Folks, I’ve had my Apple Watch Ultra for 1 week. I’m a stats kind of guy. My battery usage was phenomenal. 10% charge equaled 6 hours. I was getting 36 hours with 40% charge remaining. Today I updated to 9.5.1. Now 20% equals 6 hours. So, I’ve lost half my regular usage after update. Also today was a lighter than normal usage day for me. Tried hard restart on both devices and the other suggestions. Haven’t done the unpair and wipe yet and I won’t be impressed if I have to regularly do that after updates.

Just sharing. Wish everyone the best with this.

Paul Sitahal wrote:

Apparently LD150 you don’t seem to have a problem with battery drainage after the update or updates, but many do including myself and I believe that G10Bud is reacting under utter frustration that Apple have not addressed this Discussion forum to date about this immense problem that is affecting many. So be gentle!

Come back when you have tried every line of this.

Apple Watch uses a LOT of battery - Apple Community