Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update

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.

Fixed and figured it out. Apple Watch Series 7 - weather app. Privacy I turned to never and battery lasted all day. Turned it back to ask or while using the app - battery dies and watch lasts 2 hours max. Factory reset watch - unpaired and re-paired - didn’t matter. Only way to last longer than 2 hours was change the weather privacy setting to never.

As many others here I am facing battery drain issues since I updated my S7 (86% battery health) to Watch OS10 / 10.1

In general I think there were two issues:

1. Massive battery drain up to the point where the watch doesn't even charge, mostly caused by 3rd party apps and 3rd party watch face apps
2. More battery drain than usual, making the watch only last for approx. 12 hours instead of 16 with around 50% battery left

I was facing the second issue and tried everything suggested:

- Removed weather widget and watch face complications

- Deleted all watch faces and only used a very basic one without any complications

- Disabled all measurements for heart-rate, blood oxygen, etc

- Disabled background app refresh

- Disabled hand washing timer

- Disabled always on display

- Disabled WiFi and Bluetooth

- Reset the watch and set it up as new

Nothing helped. Even when using Low Power mode my watch was draining around 5% per hour. (I have an excel sheet where I enter the remaining battery load every hour at the moment to see what actions might have helped)

I then decided to see what happens when I connect my watch to my work iPhone (older XR that I usually only use for work related stuff) and guess what: No battery drain at all. Used it normally and after one hour it was still at 100% (where I would have been at 93-97 before) and even some hours later it just went down a bit. With that it seemed like the issue wasn't actually related to the watch but more to the phone or something on the phone. I then did the following:

1. Put the watch on the charger
2. Unpair the watch
3. Disable Watch App from iCloud settings on my iPhone
4. Uninstall the Apple Watch App from my iPhone
5. Restart the iPhone
6. Reinstall the Apple Watch app
7. Pair Apple Watch to phone again as a new watch

Not all of these steps might be required but since I did this I see some improvements. After 12 hours of using the watch my battery is now at 50% where it would have been between 20 and 36 before. This is still not like 50% at the end of the day as it used to last but with 86% battery health I think this is not too bad.

Interestingly the Watch App is not showing up under my iCloud settings again, yet. It completely disappeared from there.

I don't know what exactly helped and if this is really a fix or just some more voodoo like all the other suggestions but it feels like an improvement for me and might be worth a try for others facing similar issues.

I was experiencing the same problem, and I had also noticed that it lost connection with my phone. It was only connecting through the cellular data. So here’s what I did I unpaired the watch then I repaired the watch to the phone. I selected a different back update not the most recent one. Now I’m just going back to US cellular to have them reactivate my cellular plan on my watch. But the battery drain now is a whole lot better.

I had the same issues when I did the update. I finally looked at my Background App Refresh settings on my watch and saw that EVERY app was turned on. Once I turned the apps off that I did not want to be refreshed, my battery life went back to normal. I have had my watch on all day and the battery level is at 73%.

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;

1. Unpaired the watch and set it up again restoring from backup, NOT an erase all option, an Unpairing.
2. Let it restore and chose to setup from backup then restarted the watch and my iPhone.
3. Removed ALL 3rd party apps from the watch including any watch face apps.
4. 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.
5. Restarted the watch and iPhone together and once restarted the Modular faces were gone on the watch itself.
6. 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.
7. 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.

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.

So this appears to be an issue with a 3rd Party app not actually 10.1, It was just caused the 3rd party app and the ios to not behave properly. Applde is not responsible for 3rd party apps behavior. I deleted the MobyFace App and the watch went back to normal operation. My wife has a Series 8 and it was doing the same, all I did for her was remove the MobyFace App and hers went back to normal operation and battery use.

Before

After : 100% Charge and Normal Battery behavior

My problem arose with watchOS 10.2.

SOLVED: I did a complete reset of my Apple Watch Ultra 2 and did not restore from a backup.

It is now working fine with reasonable battery drain.

Before this I unsuccessfully had tried: unpairing and repairing with my iPhone, reducing notifications from the iPhone to the apple watch, and disabling double tap (all suggestions offered somewhere in the community).

Your mileage may differ.

It appears the Noise app was enabled automatically after the update. This will significantly reduce battery life. Personally, I was getting 14-16 hours and it was completely dead, after turning off I now get 16 hours and still have about 40%. I also disable the always on screen.

Series 7 watch.

Turning off all the extra apps that were mirrored to my phone and turning off the sleep tracking (can’t wear my watch at night anyway) seems to have resolved the issue. I think the update turned on a bunch of background apps that are draining the battery 🤷🏼‍♀️

I seemed to have resolved it .

Here is what I did

Got enough charge in teh watch to last about 15 minutes

unpaired the watch and it reset

re-paired the watch , restored from my last backup.

removed all the watch face aps , clockology , etc....

put watch into power save mode.

Put it on the charge cradle for the night .

Woke up this morning to a 100% charged watch .

So far this morning it has used 1% , which is what I normally expect .

Hope this helps ........

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.

Same experiences as everyone here. After unpairing and repairing several times, shutting off optimized battery charging, shutting off location services, shutting off Bluetooth, hard resetting the watch - nothing and I mean nothing helped. Seems uninstalling the Moby Face App may be my fix. I just took it off the charger 20 minutes ago at 100% and it’s still at 100%. Prior to removing the app it would have already been at 80% in 20 minutes.

I updated my phone to the most recent update (which I had done for both my series 9 and iPhone 14) and was experiencing a rapid battery drain. After unpairing and repairing my watch it seems to have fixed the issue!