Apple Watch battery drains super fast after 10.1 update.

Series 6 here. Before the update, it would last well over a day. Yesterday it died after a few hours. You can literally watch the battery drain. It's so fast. I've been unplugged for 45 minutes and I'm already at 82%. This is a big problem. I reset my watch last night to see if it was me. At least now I know it's many of us.

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!

I updated my iPhone 13Pro and Apple Watch series 8 last night to the new iOS, the battery on my watch was completely dead this morning, put it on the puck charger, charged it to 100% and the battery has now drained 30% in an hour and half.

My charge used to last 2-3 days.

This started happening to me as well soon after I had updated to watch Os 10.1 for my series 6. I charge mine overnight after I had updated and wire it for only one hour at full charge and dropped down to 60%. Less than 3 hours wearing my watch it was at 10%. This had never occurred with previous updates. I wish to add that this morning while I was watching YouTube videos on my iPhone 40mins soon after that my watch was from 100% to 68% . Not sure if that’s part of the cause or anything to do with it but I thought I’d share it.

Exactly the same issue as well. Upgraded my Series 6 to 10.1 last night. I use it for sleep monitoring, so charged it to 100 per cent before going to bed. It failed to even last through the night, and has been draining much more quickly than usual throughout the day; it lost 30 per cent of charge during a half-hour dog walk. I'm now having issues charging it and it is getting very hot. All this is behaviour it didn't suffer from before the update. The 10.1 update has pretty much rendered it useless.

Just a Me Too.

Series 6 watch paired with an iPhone 15 Pro. Everything was fine on WatchOS 10, the 10.1 update literally drains my watch battery in a couple of hours.

I've rebooted both, unpaired/re-paired between them, stopped using GPS for weather app and nothing makes a difference. It's been overnight and no change so it's not an "optimising" issue as some people seem to be inferring - the watch is currently useless.

After the recent spate of software issues I'm starting to think that Apple is losing its way with software development.

Series 7 watch that now lasts for a max of 4 hours on a full charge. Only been a problem since I upgraded to 10.1 - just spent 2 hours in a Apple Store which was a complete waste of my time.

only suggestion was to pay to have my watch cleared and the software reinstalled - however that would be the latest version of 10.1….

next stop, Samsung!

I agree, the software quality has gone downhill post Steve Jobs. They are pushing the software out too fast, then pushing out fixes to correct a bug in the previous version. The was one of the worst software update. This also happened many years back with the iPhone 4S. The software update drained the phone battery, and Apple denied it until more cases were made aware, then Apple credited those who paid to have their phone battery replaced. I hope Apple pushes a fix soon. Starting to lose faith in their product quality.

On my second call to Apple. Just had me wipe my watch, un-pair and re-pair because of 10.1.

First blamed me for installing the Beta, second tech says it's not the Beta, 'because they don't do that'

Trying to get my watch charged past 34% now. Last night went from 61% to 40% while on the charger.

No luck so far.

Not good.

I think you may be correct. As usual with a lot of updates on any device, they do not seem to always work with the settings on the device. Even the Macs now reboot several times on updates to clean things out of memory.

It may be beneficial to unpair the watch and power it off and bring it back around.

I used to DFU my iPhones every time there was a major release as it really helped the performance and behavior. But I have not done that in a couple of years as everything seems to work fine. No way yet to do anything like that on a watch, but maybe one year it will happen as the watch gets more powerful.

That doesn't help. A full day of nothing. Un-pair, Re-pair, wiped, no apps, won't charge past 34% now. Apple blames me for downloading a beta of 10.1

This is a software issue they need to fix, but they are focused on the Big Event on the 30th, so no joy.

Is there a way to roll back to a previous WatchOS? 8:00am: 100%. 11:00am 39%.

My watch is a major part of how I stay on track with work and meetings as it allows me to be alerted to last minute changes and upcoming meetings while I’m busy. This update/bug is going to be a huge issue with my day to day work abilities.

I updated to 10.1 and the battery life is now terrible. I just took it off the charger at 100% and it went down to 96% in less than 15 minutes. Terrible update. Please fix. I used to be able to wear my watch all day and it would be at least 50%.

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 have a Series 4 Apple Watch. Immediately following the 10.1 update, my watched died. It was on a known good charger overnight and died within minutes when I put it on. A complete reset did not help the drain issue. I did get the watch to charge but it went from 100% to 49% in less than 3 hours. It drained the remaining 48% in an hour. I have tried two different chargers this morning and can't get the watch to charge to full. The watch is now useless. Hopefully a fix is released soon.