Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update

The new software update isn’t helping at all. Updated my phone last night, fully charged watch overnight, got up at 7am, did gym for an hour. Now, two hours later the battery is already down to 72%. Back to a future of APPLE WATCH charging three times per day…

Some faces offer the option to see the battery charge left but most do not and yes that very useful screen that popped up with swipe up was removed, clearly by someone at Apple who doesn’t use the brand’s own watch. Bummers.

What I’ve begun to realise, is that charging takes a LOT longer than it used to. 

I wear mine to bed, and put it on charge as soon as I wake up. It used to be fully charged by the time I was ready to head out, but not anymore. I have to give it a top-up when I get to work. 

I’ve tried with optimised charging on and off. It makes no difference either way for me. 

After I upgraded from iPhone 14 premax to the 15 premax my apple watch very rapidly loses its power. It used to last the whole day. Now I need to recharge 3-4 times a day making almost worthless. I was hoping the 10.1.1 would fix the problem but it didn't. Note unlike some mine will recharge to 100%, but that helps little. Apple needs to fix this pronto.

I hav previously has the same issues as most of you but i hav noticed with my watch that once i update either phone or watch if i do a full reset after the battery again goes back to normal iv done this after each update it may not work for everyone but its worked for me iv also not turned any apps off including photo sync im using my watch daily paired with airpods for music and the battery is still at 45% by night time

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.

Wow I’ve seen that on my watch (Apple Watch SE: not sure which exact model) but I can’t help but notice my battery drains rather quickly 🫣. I hope Apple can fix that problem asap for all Apple Watch users and customers who have questions.

also: it wouldn’t hurt to buy a portable Apple Watch charger off amazon…..

Apple Watch battery drains 40% faster than prior to update. I Updated my Apple SE watch and I phone 14 Pro Max the same week and only since these updates have I had this battery drain issue. I was able to go two days without charging it and use all the regular apps and now it is dead at 4pm? What the heck! Get it fixed Apple!!! Tech is no good if it doesn’t work when you want it to.

Just updated my Apple Watch 8 and it drained from 100% to 9% before lunchtime. I charged it up again and two hours later it's 74% and it's almost too hot to wear. I've shut it off. For the past 13 months I’ve been able to get two days on a charge with the battery between 60 and 75% after the first day and only at 48% when I’d charge it the second day. Then the update comes along and it's pointless to even put on now.

I use this for medical reasons and I can't depend on it now.

For me, on an Ultra 2 under 10.2, it has become really bad.

I lose 1% of the battery life every 3-6 minutes. This is more than twice the rate of loss than under 10.1.2.

No workouts, no phone calls, no streaming...

Re-paired the watch and no better.

I am now having to recharge the battery while driving to keep the watch running. This is very frustrating.

Help please.

I have been having the same issue. I bought this watch to take on my Runs with me and now I can’t use it. If I use my app the watch is dead in 20 mins and my run last longer than that. Then I let it charge all night and day and tried to run with it same problem. My watch is useless.

A few more observations from my end:

I talked to Apple support on Friday morning and they did some remote diagnostics, including a battery usage report from where they could see that the app that mostly uses the battery on my watch is the Maps app. An app that I never use and I have all direction notifications disabled.

According to an Apple support document it should be possible to delete the maps app from the watch with WatchOS 9.4 or later but I can’t uninstall it on my watch.

I have reset my watch one more time on Friday evening. While doing so I noticed that the watch App on my phone shows more than 500MB documents and data. On my wife’s phone it only shows a few MB and she doesn’t have the battery drain issue. So I thought I delete the app from my phone, restart the phone and then download the app again to clear that only to find that it still shows the same amount of documents and data afterwards.

I still went ahead and set up the watch again and this time (probably did this 4 or 5 times already) on Watch OS 10.2 things seem to have gotten better. Today, Sunday morning I took it off the charger at 9:00am and now at 11:30am it is at 96%. 

One more thing that is different after the reset now though is that I don’t see anyone who I am sharing my fitness rings with anymore on the watch. They still show up on my phone but not on the watch and they report that they still see me but without any data. It just shows all my rings as 0 for them.

My wife only shares her rings with me while I share it with 6 people in total.

wondering if the battery drain could be connected to the number of people you share your fitness rings with.

I have always been very critical with this battery problem after watchOS 10 update in my series 5, but with the latest update 10.2 the battery consumption is much more stable, higher than that of watchos 9, but acceptable.

I take the watch out of the charger at 1:00am, I sleep with it and the battery is at 5% at night 9:30pm. Display always on except at night. With a small bike activity track I need a small charge at mid day.

The health of the battery has dropped to 79%, normal with a watch that is more than 3 years old. This health allows me to change the battery. I don't know if this replace will contribute to a much longer battery life.

Bets regards.

I'm having issues too. Although this update is very elegant and looks more appealing the battery is definitely not. Installed this update 2 days ago and it was keeping stable battery but of course there is always a reason. At the time I was in a different country so to prevent cellular phone plan charges cellular was off. However when I came back home and turned on cellular my battery can crashing down here is a time list.

6:30 AM Wake Up 100%

7AM Eat Breakfast 96%

8:30 AM at school 82%

Watch Powered off for 3 hours

11:30 AM Lunch 64%

Watch Powered off for 4 hours

3:30 PM 42%

Charged 4PM 38%

Test on Apple Watch SE 2 with battery health of 87%

My watch would last 12-15 hours before now I can barely use it for 6-7 hours. Every update the battery drains and Apple needs to fix this fast. I am relieved to hear that I am not alone.

I took my Watch 6 to an Apple Store and told them about the problem. The battery health is at 83% and the Genius rep told me it was normal that 83% health would equate to 5 HOURS OR LESS OF battery time. Like what in the world how is that even possible? How can it go from 12+ hours to just 5 hours of battery time suddenly over a weekend.

Just acknowledge this OS update is draining our batteries and fix it please