Series 7 Apple Watch. After 10.1 update my battery only lasts a few hours. I can literally watch the percentage go down. Rebooted the watch. Shut off background app refresh after advised by a friend. Still drains ridiculously fast. It’s essentially useless now. I’m out of ideas. Anyone else have this problem? This is crazy.
Just an update on this post. I found a solution that worked for me. It probably won’t be a solution for others as this seems to be a bit if a mystery on why this happened.
The short story: I deleted all those third party watch face apps. That fixed it.
The longer version: First thing I did after having the watch off all night was reset it as new. Took awhile because the battery drained really fast while it was repairing. Had to wait for it charge back up so it could finish. Honestly, it was a waste of time. The watch wouldn’t even charge. Stayed at between 15 and 17 percent.
In one of these threads here someone mentioned removing the watch face apps ( it was either Facer or Moby Face) so on my iPhone I deleted all of them (I had four) and waited. My watch was at 100% within a half hour. And it was cool to the touch. Not hot. It is now about 7 1/2 hours later and I’m down to 74%. Which is normal. I expect it to be better tomorrow because I won’t be fiddling with it as much. This also solved another problem (which I posted in another thread) The iPhone Watch App was misbehaving. All changes made to any of the faces, added faces or deleted faces wouldn’t sync over. I couldn’t even change faces from the app. This fixed that too.
Not sure why these app made this mess. Bad code. Not updated for watchOS 10. Who knows. But if you have these apps try deleting them.
edit: Seems to be what others are saying. Delete those apps. That should do it. But like I said. Might not work for everyone.
My wife and I have two S9 stainless steel watches (41mm & 45mm). Both running watchOS 10.3. Normal battery drain. Nothing drastic. Running 5-10 non-Apple apps with minimal effect on battery.
NOTE: I cannot confirm if the steps below work with models S4-S8 and Ultra 1 & 2.
If you update to 10.3, I would recommend the following process (this worked for me on both watches):
I would prefer not to go through the steps above. However, my wife and I don't have as many apps, settings, etc., on the watches as we do on the phones. It would be easier to simply update and move on like every other Apple device (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV).
Good luck!
watchOS 10.3 is now available. Time to see if an operating system update helps anyone.
The only thing I have ever done that corrected any problem with my watch has been to not restore from the phone but to restore the watchOS as a new watch.. Probably just a weird kink but seems to work.
Hi Everyone,
After doing some research on YouTube, one person posted that if you updated your watchOS to 10.1 while your phone is still on iOS 17.0, your watch battery will old drain. Even if you updated your phone to iOS 17.1 afterwards, your watch battery will still drain. One solution was to unpair, then pair the watch again while being on the latest software version. Not sure if it’s an order of sequence issue. I tried it out and noticed that the watch has charged to 100%. Haven’t taken it off the charger yet, so not sure if that did the trick. Will see how it goes later today. I’m still gonna keep my appointment with Apple just to make sure.
Hope this helps!
Just an update post unpairing and re-pairing the watch, the rate of battery power consumption seems to improve in comparison to yesterday rate of consumption (~30%/hr). I’ve had the watch on now for about an hour forty minutes and the battery went from 100% to 88%, so that’s an improvement. I still think it’s still a little more than normal, but it’s definitely an improvement so far. Will update at the end of the day to see where the battery life is at.
I tired resetting my watch from a backup with an older IOS. The watch automatically updates the software to 10.1 no matter what IOS version is in the back up. It’s so frustrating and Apple told me there is no way to go back one the update is installed. They said they only thing that can be done is wait for an update that hopefully fixes the issue
I called Apple Support and they had me rest it to factory default. It’s charging now and they asked me to monitor the battery drain and that I should call them back in a couple days to inform them of how it’s performing.
Same issue on a replacement series 4 I received today 10/27. Brand new-to-me, wouldn't charge to full due to overheating, and drained at last check, 8% in 12 minutes. Very hot on charger. On with Apple support right now and the person said: "Hey I would recommend you not using the Apple Watch until advised by the senior team, I will now escalate this case to the senior team, who will further investigate and help you with your option." Having tons of other issues after being forced to update to 10.1 like apps not showing correctly, trouble pairing, problems restarting the watch. Yuck.
Hello guys, a bit late to the party, but here’s my feedback too….
I was having similar issues - nuts that Apple have given us an update that wrecks our -very expensive - watches! Does no-one test these things???? After installing iOS 10.1 my watch went down to 67% in about 10 mins, slowed down draining when back on charge but was still going down.
Anyway, I deleted all 3rd party apps, unpaired, re-paired, popped it back on for a full charge and - so far - all seems ok. 20 mins in and holding 100%.
Hope this helps.
Like others have mentioned on here I’ve uninstalled other watch face apps. Specifically Moby Face and Watchy
I’ve left other 3rd party apps on and this seems to be solving the issue. Battery use seems to be back to normal but it’s only been an hour so will test some more and confirm.
Same. I read about this last night and removed Mobyface and reset all my settings back to how I had them. It charged overnight and while it's still draining faster (down 9% in a little under 3 hours), it's not dead by now.
There's still issues with Watchos, but getting rid of Moby seemed to help a LOT.
Lately been a lot of battery issues with every OS update, you'd think someone would track those.
So I had hoped it might be MobyFace, but it hasn't been for me. Series 7 watch, 86% battery capacity, but will barely charge with background refresh off and no third party apps installed. The default watch face and the Mickey Mouse one because the default is too busy for me. When I take it off the charger, it drains at ~1% per minute! After spending 30 HOURS on the charger, it did make it up to 80% charge, but within half an hour was down to 50%. I've had it cleared with the Genius Bar there is no damage and hoping my tech support escalation will lead to it being sent in and repaired as a software problem that is killing my watch unless they put a patch out before then and I can get it charged over 50%. I've tried unpairing and repairing without restoring from backup to no avail. Apple really stuffed it up on this update.
That’s what I thought. Just got off chat and phone support with Apple regarding this issue on my series 6. Was told it might take 72 hours or so to resolve after update and reset wound be next step if not resolved. They were very fast to respond. I am not going through the process of deleting apps like many have suggested. That does not address the issue and is only temporary mitigation. I’m confident Apple will address the issue.
Yeah, people keep saying to delete the MobyFace app. So I unpaired and repaired my watch. When it was loading apps, I selected to not install MobyFace but IT DID IT ANYWAYS! When I select it to not show it on my watch, the green slider is greyed out and I can’t swipe it in list mode and there’s no x when I get it to jiggle. WHAT THE HECK!!!!
Same here 10.1.1 made the battery drain worse than 10.1. Both are worse than watchOS 9. Apple watchOS 10.x.x is some of the most unstable and unreliable software I have ever seen from Apple in decades. Reminds me of the old days of windows 98. The only thing I have been able to do to get overnight performance then 14 hours during the day (charging twice per day), is to remove all 3rd party apps, delete all deletable apple apps that are not critical to my use, disable background refresh, get rid of Apple weather and Apple world clock apps and turn off location services. By the way, my battery capacity is 84%, my watch passes all Apple diagnostics (twice now) and Apple will only replace the battery for a fee of $299 (because the battery has over 80% capacity). Apple absolutely claims not have the ability to roll my watch back to watchOS 9.6.3. THIS IS NOT what made Apple a multi-trillion dollar company that people trusted.
Apple Watch battery drains super fast after 10.1 update.
