Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update

Similar experience for me: After installing watchOS 10.1, would lose charge after about 3 hours. I took my watch to the Apple Store and an Apple Genius ran diagnostics and said the battery was okay, so it must be a software issue and that, since it just started malfunctioning, it must be something new and, therefore, easier to get rid of with a reset. Further, he said that, if this procedure did not work, it would require a more extensive investigation into the software, not detailing exactly what that would entail. He then proceeded to reset my Apple Watch Series 4 by first unpairing it, then resetting it, then re-pairing it to my iPhone 14 with iOS 17.1. Well, after all that, and after several days and more recharges, my Apple Watch can now go from 100% to 18% in FIVE hours instead of 3 hours, so maybe that's "progress"? And, at least I now know it is NOT a battery issue.

Other posts have suggested removing third-party apps, like watch faces, but I never had any of those, so I guess I'm going to try and revert the OS back to 10.0, which was working fine until I updated to 10.1.

I use my watch a lot, and for the $400+ it cost, it shouldn't be a mere piece of jewelry.

Btw, I had accidentally made a service appointment at Best Buy for this issue and, according the their Geek Squad "Apple guy," their policy is to replace the watch for battery and screen issues - at a cost of about $250 for a Series 4!

I deleted Moby Fox from my phone and watch series 9 and it's now back to charging correctly and to a full 100%. The watch battery is also back to draining at the rate it did before the newest update.

Since as far as I can see nobody has explained how to delete apps from the watch, here's the easiest way to do it:

In the Watch app on your phone, scroll down to the list of apps under "Installed on Apple Watch." Tap on the right arrow for the app and set the green slider to the left. It will then be uninstalled on the watch but remain on your phone, and added to the list of "Available Apps" at the bottom of the list.

Personally I would advise against removing all third party apps. Even if this corrects your battery draining issue, it means you will still not know which app was misbehaving. Taking away one or two at a time and seeing if it helps gives you a much better chance of finding the problem. Generally trying one thing at a time is a preferable diagnostic approach. The blunderbuss approach may fix the problem, but you'll never know why.

BTW, installing watchOS 10.1 seems to have corrected the battery drain issue on my Series 5. So probably a lot of us can simply do this and forego the other steps.

Following advice in the thread, I deleted "MobyFace" that I was using for some watch faces. That appears to have resolved the issue. Previously I would see watch lose battery FAST, also heating up while charging. Now I'm maintaining a charge after a full battery fill.

Knock on wood, that was my issue - as with several others here.

my watch (s6) was doing exactly the same tried some of the solutions in here didn’t seem to work, then noticed my watch was set to always show the time which was stopping my watch sleeping when I put my arm down turned it off and that seems to have done the trick settings>display&brightness>always on

Update: 3 hours after uninstalling MobyApp, the series 9 charged 100% within an hour without low power mode, and I've been wearing the watch for 1.5- 2 hours and it's only gone down 5% during that time (believe it or not!). I'm guessing the watch will last longer (will test the full day), but I'm also going to assume that there may be a few other 3rd party apps in the background that we all may need to uninstall until (or *if*) apple acknowledges some architecture issues in the os that is causing this issue with some 3rd party apps. So far, my specific issue does 100% seem to be related to MobyApp. I've emailed MobyApp tech support, and I'll inform the Apple Sr. tech support people too in the hope and prayer that the info gets to the engineers in both companies.

I was having the same issue. I called apple support and zero help from a regular representative. Told me to return the watch. I called AT&T and they said since it’s a warranty issue, I had to go through apple. AT&T connected me with a higher apple representative. This person asked me to type moby face into my search on my phone. It brought up an app that I never installed. It was something with photography. He had me delete it off my phone and check it was off my watch. Since doing that, my watch is not draining any more. He said he has had several fixes with doing that. Hope this helps cause I was about done with apple.

I did the unpair and reset as new. It still drained. Turns out it was a third party app killing the battery. In my case it was one of those third party watch face apps. Once I deleted them off the phone it began to charge at its normal rate. Kept its charge. And no longer got hot. I see lots of people here say they don’t have any of these type of apps. My guess is there’s a bunch of third party apps misbehaving. Why? Who knows maybe something was changed in the new update. Or maybe with so many apps we’re bound to run across some badly coded apps.

Well it seems to be the same issue. For most of us deleting those third party watch face apps off the phone solved the problem. I’d start removing all the third party apps off the watch. See if that helps. Then add one by one (the way we used to back in the old Mac days for extension conflicts) until the problem comes back. Then that’s the problem app.

My battery was draining much faster than normal on my Apple Watch Ultra 1. A 100% charge would barely make it an entire work day after the 10.1 update.

One of the suggested workarounds on this discussion was to remove the MobyFace App, which is a popular app that comes with free (and paid) licensed property photo “wallpapers” that match the watch bands that they sell.

I’m happy to report that my AW Ultra 1 is now showing normal battery life after removing the MobyFace App from both my iPhone and Watch lasting at least a day and a half if I’m also doing outdoor fitness tracking like I did last weekend.

That has been a common experience for many of us after installing those OS updates, regardless of which watch or iPhone. I wouldn’t replace my watch or phone unless it’s verifiably broken because given that it’s occurring across many types of watches and phones it seems to be a software (OS) issue, not a hardware (watch/phone) issue. I would also avoid giving Apple megabucks for hardware “repairs” because they should fix the software.

Some people swear that removing 3rd-party apps from their watches fixed the issues for them. Others, me included, never had 3rd-party apps on our watches so that clearly wasn’t the problem for us.

When I installed the 10.1.1 Watch OS update (Series 9 watch) and the iPhone 17.1.1 OS update (iPhone 12 Mini) my watch went back to charging to 100% and both my watch and phone went back to holding a charge for a normal length of time; however, other people report that installing those updates didn’t help them, so who knows? Apple needs to straighten this mess out.

I deleted all content on my watch and paired again as a new device. Battery still drained rapidly for about 4 hours, then stabilized. By the next day it was back to normal: 36% remained after 16 hours.

Watch Battery Issue Solved: So I did 3 things that were recommended, all at once.  1) Turned photo synch off and doing a hard reboot. 2) Dim display to lowest level. 3) Turned off wake on wrist raise. Combined these got me to normal life. I then turned on wake on raise as I didn't like that being off. Battery life was still good. Then I increased display brightness to middle setting. Battery life is still good.

SO I THINK THE MAJOR CULPRIT IS PHOTO SYNC, which I never used anyway.

After weeks of back and forth with the Apple support I got my battery drain issue fixed by getting my watch (S7, 86% maximum capacity according to the watch) replaced as part of my AppleCare+ agreement.

The last test we did was to connect my watch to another iPhone to see if the same drain happens there and it did.

They send me a replacement S7 on Watch OS 9.5.2 and I thought I would keep it there and not update it to WatchOS 10, only to notice that the same drain happened there as well.

As I knew Apple wouldn't troubleshoot any further without me updating to the latest WatchOS release I did that since I had nothing to lose and surprisingly since then my battery drain issue is fixed. My old watch usually lasted around 12-14 hours max and the replacement now still has around 50% battery left after 15 hours. I don't know what exactly the issue was but it must have been a hardware issue on the watch since nothing else changed.

Hi! Yesterday, I deleted the follow third party app, “Watch Faces by MobyFox,” and it solved the problem completely. No more battery drain whatsoever, so far.

It really works.