Since updating to WatchOS 10.0.1, the watch battery charges only to 80% overnight and the battery drains more quickly than before the update. I also updated my iPhone 14 pro to iOS 17 around the same time. Would this impact the watch battery?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
As many here I was affected by the constant battery drain of approx. 5% per hour and I think I found what was causing this for me.
When I checked the Watch App on my phone ==> General ==> About it showed that it synced 15 photos even though I have not selected any photos or albums to sync.
Opening the photos app on the watch confirmed that and showed that there are no photos on the watch.
I then selected an album with one picture to sync and the photo count went up to 16. Next I created a photo watch face and set it to dynamic and suddenly the watch showed random pictures that I never selected to sync. I searched for these photos on my iPhone and deleted them from there until the watch only showed 1 picture being synced, which was the one from the album. I then changed the watch face back from dynamic to album and left the face on the watch.
I did this on Tuesday. Yesterday, on Wednesday my watch was at 37% after wearing it without additional charging for almost 17 hours. Usually it would have been dead after 14 hours max. Today I took the watch off the charger at 7:30, at 8:41 it jumped to 99% where it would have been at 94% or even less before and now at 12:30 it is still at 87% which is 2.6%/hour.
I think the constant photo sync would be a good explanation for this issue as the watch would constantly download new pictured from the phone and would index them. In addition to that it would also explain why not everyone is affected by this since this would not apply to people having their photo sync configured to sync specific albums rather than the watch syncing random photos when nothing is selected for the photo sync. And it would also explain why resetting the watch doesn't help to fix this issue since the watch would start randomly syncing photos again after the reset.
Might be worth to check/try for others.
Okay guys. I read through here and saw instructions to delete any third party face apps from your watch and phone. I had one “MobyFace”, that had Star Wars faces. My series 8 was using a charge in 4 hours from 32. It has just dropped only 2% in 1.5 hours so my bug seems to be fixed. I also went to a face that just has the time for now. That may be the reason mines okay or deleting the third party app may be the fixer. I’m about to use a face with all four corners having info and see how it drains. That will gives us the key. I’m happy now I have a good charge.
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 uninstalled MobyFace, all faces in the watch face que from the app, reset my watch 8, my iPhone 13pro to factory settings, logged back in on both and paired the watch and phone again. In 24 hours only used 54%. It was draining in 4 hours since the beta 10.1 10/12/2023 I installed. Guys, stop being mad at Apple because the third party app (which they warn you to use at your own risk) code has a bug with their update. It’s like buying an aftermarket piece for your car and getting mad at your car if the aftermarket piece messed your car up and voided the warranty. Apple doesn’t do updates to go along with apps code, it’s sends the update to the developers way before the public for their code to be ready for the update. MobyFace screwed this up, not Apple.
Try removing all the third party apps. The add one by one to see the culprit. For most of us it was one app that happened to be a watch face app. It’s not to that’s it’s the only one causing problems.
This worked for me, don't know if it will work for others, but here's what I did:
1) Delete ALL non-Apple watch apps;
2) Shut down watch;
3) Charge to 100% (I used a 5W Apple charger instead of my usual 12W Apple charger, but I don't know if a slower charge has any effect);
4) Restart watch
Voila! I've been using my Watch S4 as usual and, after 15 hours, I still have 47% charge left! Quite a change from earlier when battery died in 3-5 hours.
Hope this works for others! Good luck!
To all,
After much frustration i would like to share that deleting an app called MOBYFACES and a couple of others especially CLOCKOLOGY. Also pressing the crown and side button (Force Reboot) my Ultra Series 1 has been holding its charge and I saw a change immediately. It even charged fast like it was doing when i first purchased. Will be cautious on future updates.
Hope this helps others.
To all,
After much frustration i would like to share that deleting an app called MOBYFACES and a couple of others especially CLOCKOLOGY. Also pressing the crown and side button (Force Reboot) my Ultra Series 1 has been holding its charge and I saw a change immediately. It even charged fast like it was doing when i first purchased. Will be cautious on future updates.
Hope this helps others.
My issue resolved with removal of one app - MobyFace. Not sure what the app was doing, but the battery drain problem went away after deleting it from my phone. The watch faces remained on my watch, at least.
I have considered re-adding the app - but I'll give it a bit of time to see if I want to/need to add that app again.
I don't use MobyFace. But I've a since a few others mentioning that this is the app that seems to be draining the battery so quickly. It doesn't like the update. The others commenters have deleted the app and the quicker battery draining stopped happening.
Okay. Haven’t posted for a while, but here’s my update. I decided to risk it again and received access to the new 10.2 and 17.2 updates. I then made sure I blocked any future advanced updates. I also removed MobyFox app from phone and watch. Since new update, my series 9 is back to fully charging to 100%, and the battery issue is gone. Now my watch goes from 100% through a 10 hour work day and beyond and is at 47% after 14 hours. Just wanted you to know what seems to have worked in my case. Hope it helps.
UPDATE: I have uninstalled Mobyface and a few other 3rd party apps, turned the watch off and back on, and it seems to be charging normally. Time will tell, but it’s doing far better now. Thanks everyone for the info!
MSMinVA wrote:
But seriously all this talk about 3rd-party apps … nope, it’s the OS. There are way too many of us who don’t have any 3rd-party apps on our watches, and never did, but do have batteries that suddenly started draining very quickly as soon as we installed the 10.0.1 OS update. Not a coincidence.
There are users that are having battery issues because of poorly written 3rd party apps/complications. If you happen to be one of them, then it is a quick fix to remote the 3rd party app.
There are reports that watchOS 10.2 beta seems to fix their battery problems. Hopefully Apple will release 10.2 real-soon-now.
And even if it were the 3rd-party apps, what’s the point of having an expensive smart watch that you can’t load and use 3rd-party apps on if you want to?
Not all 3rd party apps are created equal. In this case, some 3rd party apps have proven to be battery hogs.
If you want to strap a car battery to your wrist, then you can have as many poorly written apps you want on your expensive Apple Watch.
Most people prefer the lighter weight of the Apple Watch, but that means watchOS, the Apple provided apps/complications, and 3rd party apps need to sip battery juice sparingly so that the Apple Watch battery can last all day long.
Think of it this way. If you purchase an expensive, stylish car, you would not want to haul horse manure around in the passenger seats. You might be a bit more choosy about what you allow in your expensive car. The same applies to the apps you choose to install.
NOTE: If Apple provides an app or with all apps deleted and no active complications watchOS consumes excessive battery, then you should be all means report this to Apple via
https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch
Telling your fellow users in these forums does not motivate Apple because unless you send feedback, they do not know what you are saying. Make sure your voice is actually heard where it can do some good for all your fellow Apple Watch users.
I was having the same fast battery drain problem as (almost) everybody else — without a single 3rd-party app on my watch, with watch OS 10.0.1 and whatever the corresponding phone OS was at the time — sorry but at this point I don’t remember, 17.0.1? I have a series 9 watch and iPhone 12. Unpairing/re-pairing, shutting down for 1/2hour, nothing worked. Didn’t have to remove 3rd-party apps because I never had any.
I figured that it couldn’t get much worse, so I might as well install 10.1.1 on my watch and 17.1.1 on my phone. Imagine my shock to discover that I can now go for about 1.5 days without recharging my watch — BUT I don’t use my watch for any processing-intensive things like fitness tracking. So 10.1.1 and 17.1.1 are an improvement for me, but if anything’s obvious in this thread, it’s that your mileage will vary lol.
This comes from someone else, but it worked for me - now seems "normal" - the new watchOS automatically tries to synch photos from your phone even if you had that turned off before - that takes up a ton of processing/battery power and also kills your storage. When you turn it off, the watch returns to relatively normal operation.
Of course, Apple blew it on this - they should not have set the new version of the OS to do that.
I think this is exactly the problem. Even though photo sync is off, the watch is constantly syncing photos. You can see the photo count in the about section. This is usually 15 for me even with photo sync disabled. You can then check which Photos are synced by creating a photo Watch face, set it to dynamic and then press the share button on the upper right hand side corner to see which photos are included in the watch face / are on the watch. For me this changes multiple times a day even with photo sync disabled.
Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update
