Apple Watch Battery Draining suddenly after Software Update

I was having the same problem. Watch was completely dead in three hours after the update. I read this thread and figured there was nothing I could do. So I charged it fully, then turned it off for 24 hours, not wearing it because it was useless. On a whim, I also turned off my phone, then turned on my watch. I let my watch boot up and entered my password. After about a half an hour, I turned on my phone, and my watch has been OK ever since. Extremely bizarre and not sure if that what I did fixed the problem, but thought I would throw it out there in case desperate people wanted to try it. Good luck, everyone.

Fixed it! - I noticed that I had this draining issue after trying to update my watch. Even if I stopped the watch update on my phone I think that it was still trying to somehow update and was sucking the battery life out of my watch.

I turned "automatic updates" off in the watch app (on my phone) and then went out for the day. Naturally my watch battery died after about two hours and I had no way to charge it up so was carrying a dead watch around on my wrist for about three hours. When I got home I charged it up again and now it works fine. My advice would be to do the same as I did by turning off automatic updates and letting it die completely. Wait a couple of hours and then charge it up again. Don´t try to update again until Apple releases a fix.

It worked for me!

Thanks for posting! Apple support suggested the watch needed to be updated but it kept getting stuck in preparing.

So far so good, I think I’ll wait awhile to install the update 😬

So for anyone reading, the steps I followed:

Reset watch. On iPhone, open watch app. Go to general. Software Update. Toggle off the automatic updates. Now on the watch, go to settings. General storage. Find watchOS 10.4 and delete it.

I am having the same issue. Updated 2 days ago and now the battery drains quickly. Normally, I charge my watch around 11pm at night. At that point it has been on my arm since 8 to 8:30 am and the battery is between 55-58 percent. Last night at 9pm it warned me it was at 10 percent. Has NEVER done that. Nothing was different. Watching it today and it is draining much faster than it did before update. It is definitely the update!! Apple needs to fix this now!!!! These things cost too much for them to ruin our batteries like that!!

I didn't have any trouble installing the update but I still have the battery issues. It sometimes is OK- like for a whole evening- and then the next morning will go from 100% to dead in a few hours. Tracking a run drains it quickly- won't make it through a 10K sometimes. Glad it isn't just me. I have Apple Watch 7.

Same! I was able to get my watch update to go through but my watch battery is still dying much quicker than before. My watch needs to be charged by evening when I could go 2 days before without charging and I have done all the suggestions.

I really hope someone from Apple is reading all these comments.

After having to recharge my phone three times per day I deleted the update (10.4) from my watch and disabled automatic updates so am still running on 10.3.1, despite updating my phone to 17.4.1. Many people have not been so lucky.

Come on, Apple - give us a new update to fix the problem.

I’ve just bought my NEW APPLE SE watch , had it 3 days and have charged it 5 times already. I’ve stopped a lot of things I don’t need and it’s still loosing charge. I think Apple should be responsible. I’ll be taking mine back to where I bought it and see if they can help me.

I too, am experiencing the same thing, however, not to the same level that I see above. My Apple Watch SE is draining about 25 to 30% overnight whereas before it was less than 10%. Just as above it has been since the iPhone update. I was able to successfully update my watch to 10.4 tonight, even though it took an inordinate amount of time to “prepare” the update. I am charging my watch full before I go to bed so we will see you in the morning if this helps.

I have been having the same issue with battery draining much faster than before. I had difficulty updating my watch, but after unpairing and resetting it, then re-pairing it, the update finally went through. I immediately started noticing that my battery life was terrible. I typically charge my watch over night, but since the update my battery has been draining crazy fast. This morning I put my watch on at 5:45 am, and by 8:30 am I was down to 10% battery life.

(Potential temporary solution??) I also faced the same problem on a few Watches, all draining about 6-10% per hour.

Last night I installed OS 10.5 Dev B2 on one of them, disconnect and reset the watch, pair again, restore from backup, let it charge for 2-3 hours at 100% (letting the new OS do indexing or whatever).

So far I worn it for 30 mins, it just dropped to 99%. Hope it won't speed up :)

I am echoing everyone else, it seems. This problem of a fast dying battery started about a week ago, and seems to be getting worse. I did a reboot and that didn't help at all. I have a friend that is having the same problem. I had another update at 4:11am so I guess we will see if that fixes it? I am very concerned that it appears Apple is telling people there is nothing wrong when there clearly IS?

MINE IS FIXED!!!

I had this same problem and I fixed mine - no problems now. The first thing I did was to turn off the bluetooth on my phone, then close out all the apps on the watch - double tap the crown and swipe the apps off. The next thing was to plug both the phone and the watch into power sources and then to go to the phone and download the WATCH UPDATE. This required switching the bluetooth back on, so I did that and waited. It took a LONG TIME - probably 2 to 3 times as usual - for the update to happen, but I let them both sit on the chargers (the phone was not on a Qi charger but plugged in at the lightning port) and waited. When they were done, everything was fine. No more watch draining too fast. This has been good like this for several days now. I posted here before about it but it seems to have been lost in all the other posts about having the draining problem.

Best of luck!

Apple Watch keeps dying after being fully charged to 100%. I was getting 24 hours of service out of the battery. I am lucky to get 8 to 12 hours. I have not added additional programs. I got the watch this summer. So it makes no sense why the battery is not holding a charge for 24 hours.

Same issue, I have the Series 8 Watch... hoping to find some resolution to this soon... gonna read the thread entirely and see if any tips are discussed! Can barely get a day out of the watch, when I used to get about 2 days... but I did just make an improvement that got me from a 1/2 day to a full day... the setting I found helped was turning the minimum brightness setting OFF under Watch Settings>Accessibility>Minimum Brightness (tip from apple support). Another setting I know helped in the past was Accessibility>Reduce Motion setting to the ON position (about 6 months ago when I had a similar issue). On another note, whether I have the Display & Brightness>Always On setting set either on or off, it doesn't really help either way, so I'm just leaving it on... never seemed to change the result in the past either.

On another note, my hubby has the Watch SE from last xmas and has not had a single issue with his. We both have the iPhone 14 Pro with iOS Version 17.4.1 and then Watch OS Version 10.4.