Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update

Try this.

Ok I have had some success in fixing the battery drain on my Ultra 1st gen. iPhone 14 Pro Max (iOS 17.1) & Apple Watch Ultra (watchOS 10.1). Not sure which fixed it or if all played a part but here's what I did;

Unpaired the watch and set it up again restoring from backup, NOT an erase all option, an Unpairing.

Let it restore and chose to setup from backup then restarted the watch and my iPhone.

Removed ALL 3rd party apps from the watch including any watch face apps.

Deleted ALL modular watch faces I had in the watch app on the iPhone. I had one as my current watch face on the apple watch and when I deleted them all from the phone app I noticed it still had the modular face displayed on the watch even after several minutes. Upon looking into the watch faces on the watch itself all my modular faces were still there even though they had been deleted on the iPhone app.

Restarted the watch and iPhone together and once restarted the Modular faces were gone on the watch itself.

I temporarily used a default watch face to verify the battery was draining insanely fast. I used the Toy Story Toy Box one in default settings.

The watch wasn't draining very fast after an hour so I created a couple Modular Ultra faces the Watch App on iPhone and the watch is now draining much more slowly.

I still don't think it's back to where it was but at least it doesn't appear to be losing 90% battery in 6 hours. I hope this helps some people to get their watches working better and not being forced to put it into low power mode as some were suggesting.

After posting in this group yesterday, trying all the suggestions of unpairing & re-pairing, hard restart, hours & hours on the charger, I decided to seek support from Apple, starting with the chat. They’re able to, with your approval, run diagnostics on the watch, & the battery, & escalate the situation to someone on the phone. My diagnostic on the battery was unable to be completed because the watch has to be on for at least 6 hours, which mine hasn’t been on longer than 2 hours after the software upgrade…EXCEPT on the charger. So I have to get back with them this evening, after my phone has been on for 6 hours. They know there’s an issue, but they need more information on what is going on to find what’s causing it & therefore how to fix it. I encourage everyone who’s having the issue to reach out to Apple & let them run the diagnostics on their watch so they can collect enough data to find the problem & fix it.

After seeing some of the posts here about third party face apps, we went in this direction too. My wife and I both have MobyFace installed on our watches too (and were both having the battery drain issue). We both uninstalled and at least on mine this has slowed the battery drain on my Ultra (I was losing about 15% an hour and this has lowered to about 3% an hour - much more on par with what I was seeing prior to the update to 10.1). My wife just charged hers to 100% and removed it, so we'll see how it works on her Series 8. We hadn't done anything else besides powering off our watches and iPhones (which didn't seem to solve the issue), so fingers crossed that this fixes it in our instance. Thanks all for this suggestion! Now Apple needs to fix the OS to allow us to use our watches like we have in the past!

I had that up too. I deleted the up but kept the faces it did not help. Than I deleted the faces and put a face that has only time and date. Let’s see if it will help. But even if it helps we all want to be able to use our phones fully functions.

this app MobyFace is a very well known app and is available on the Apple Store. If it is damaging the watch wouldn’t it demage the phone as well? After all we install the app on the phone first.

I didn’t go to any website and didn’t sign up for anything. I just updated from settings > software update and bum 💥 yet 5 of the six technicians fro Apple, and even the record before I tamed to them told me I had a beta software. One, a senior one told me that he didn’t know what kind of software I had but he told me that I wouldn’t get beta if I didn’t signed up for it. AND I DID NOT.

I read here that the app MobyFace was causing a lot of problems. I deleted it from my S4 watch and it seems to help. (I wasn't using the app anyway.) Battery drain isn't anything like before, so hope that's the fix for my watch.

Exact thing is happening to my series 7. Except today it was very slow to charge and the back was hot to the touch on the charger. I’ve been texting apple support and today when I mentioned the new issue a tech called me. This is what I learned…

My watch was out of warranty so I was going to have to pay to send it in even though it obviously is a software issue.

Found out the update 10.1 is beta. I have never signed up for beta but yet the update was on my watch.

The tech suggested that he could make an appointment with the Apple Store and have the Genius Bar take a look at it. I went ahead with the appointment.

After talking with the tech at the Genius Bar, he ran more diagnostic tests on my watch and discovered it was a battery issue. I told him how my watch lasts maybe 4 hours before dying and this wasn’t an issue until the update. Good news is that they are sending it off for free to remove the new update. I also mentioned how I was told this was a beta update even though I was under the impression it was a full one. Maybe I just got a kind person at the Apple Store.

My Watch Drains to fast! Brand new Ultra 2 and it drained less than 6 hours. WTF! This new update 10.1 messed something up. Im Not happy, and what the point of having this Ultra Watch 2 if it's draining fast now.

My series 6 automatically updated to OS10 the day it was released and it immediately started suffering from severe battery drain. I normally charge my watch before going to bed, sleep with it on, wear it for the day and return it to the charge before bed and it would be on 30-40%. After updating it would go from 100% - 0% within a few hours. This pattern continued for days until it eased off slightly, whilst never returning to its former levels. OS10.0.1 released and this seemed to help slightly but I would still need to give it a top up charge halfway through the day and could no longer sleep with the watch on overnight, it would have to remain on charge.

It updated to 10.1 overnight last night and I put it on at 6.30am today. It’s now 10.50pm and it’s currently on 56% without any top up charges. It seems to be back to how it was before OS10 or at least very close to it.

I have essentially done nothing other than be annoyed and waited/hoped for an update to fix it. Whether this is the update to fix the issue for all I can’t answer but it seems to have worked for mine and just in time as I was planning to go back to analogue and give up with smart watches altogether.

I hope everyone else experiencing issues also manages to get a fix sorted.

I refuse to send my watch in! 10.1 is NOT beta! It was released to the public. So what are you going to do? Send the watch in and they will take the software out and reinstall it because 10.1 is the latest version of OS. Even if they install OS 10. When you pair it will update and then the problem will come back. There are people in this group that got a brand new watch a couple of week ago and had the problem right away! Then they assume it was a fluke and exchanged it for another one and the same thing happened!

They have to release a fix.

Mine, series 6 didn’t have problems with the 10 but the 10.1!!! You know the story…. And mine got extremely hot even on my wrist and on the table. I had to turn it off. After trying many things… I got it to about maybe 75% of what it was. Still disappointed ☹️ Apple is not taking care of us customers. They shot themselves on the foot.

Just a suggestion, turn off automatic updates. Check it manually so you know what you put and when you put an update. I have not made the last update on my iPhone, iPads and MacBook yet. They say in my country that: “If you throw a cat on boiling water, if he survives, he will be afraid 😱 of even cold water”. That is me right now.

Until Apple assumes that 10.1 was released to the public, even if by accident, but was released and has major problems and they sem a patch for it, NO MOTE UPDATES FOR ME.

This. Don’t blame Apple for third party software thats poorly written or not updated. This happens all the time. On the Mac there used to be webpages devoted to what apps will still work after a major update. This is nothing new.

Exact thing is happening to my series 8.Except today it was very slow to charge and the back was hot to the touch on the charger. Once at 100% i lower the brightness to minimum and the watch is still draining the battery 🪫. I went from 30 to 40 hours on a full charge down to less than 10 hours on a full charge apple needs to fix this asap send the new update with the dam bug fix ( my battery 🔋 health is 100%

That is exactly what I told the technician over the phone! I never signed up for beta. How did I get that update? The only real help I got was taking it into the store where they actually listened to me.