Apple Watch Battery Draining suddenly after Software Update

I was having the same problem with the Apple Watch update being stuck. I was able to update it when I did these to things:

1. My watch had to be at 50% battery
2. I quit the watch app by “throwing it out” as I like to call it.
3. Once I did that, it updated quickly!

Same thing happened to me! My phone updated last night and I used my Apple Watch for 3 hours after it charged all night and now it’s dead.

I’m having the same issue. Nothing to contribute, just here for solidarity ✊🏼

My watch has just done the update and it’s fixed the battery drain issue from the phone update

i had the same issue. Luckily, I was able to update the watch OS. After I did that, the watch is no longer losing power. So the solution is to update the watch S/W. Good luck everyone

I have the latest update and it has not solved the battery drain.

Mine won’t update. I have tried multiple times. Did hard restart on both the watch and my phone, didn’t help. Got on Apple chat support, completely unpaired and re-paired my watch, didn’t fix it. I have a support call scheduled and I am not optimistic it will help.

I’m having the same issue and watch won’t update to 10.4 - gets stuck at “preparing”. Followed all the advice from Apple chat support. Was told the battery is functioning just fine and that this can happen after an update - what?!? This has never happened after an iOS update before. Running a 10k tomorrow and hoping my watch will live through it.

Same issue as well. My iPhone did an automatic upgrade to 17.4.1 overnight Wednesday night. Watch went from 80% to 20% in about 4 hours; charged it up a good amount and then went from 75% to dead in about 4 hours including a workout.

Was charged to 100% when I went to bed at 12:30am last night, woke up at 6am and watch was dead.

Tried all sorts of tricks to get the watch upgrade to go through - restarting both devices, initiating from both watch and phone, resetting watch and restoring from backup, resetting watch and setting up as new watch... Nothing works.

It took 4 hrs for mine to drain today. Just awful. Upgraded to 17.4.1 yesterday. Seems to be taking forever to charge now too, but maybe it is because I am impatient and need to go somewhere. Need a patch apple.

I’m having the same exact problem. My Apple Watch Ultra went from 40% to dead in about 90 minutes. I was averaging 2-3 days per charge — up until I updated my iPhone to 17.4.1 this morning. 90 minutes later my watch was dead. It’s absolutely the cause of it.

I have reduced my battery drain by turning off automatic upgrades and deleting the update in Settings -> General -> Storage.

The battery usage doesn’t seem perfect but isn’t dropping like a stone now. I will try to upgrade again tomorrow, or maybe wait for a new update to be released.

This seems to work. My belief now is that it”s not the iOS update but the update for watch os that stays in a preparing mode and keeps communicating with the iPhone.

turning off the automatic updates for the Apple Watch helps. For now…

I had exactly this issue yesterday and found a fix! I woke up with my phone having automatically updated to iOS 17.4.1 and then my watch battery started draining approx 4 times faster than usual. Tried to update watch OS to 10.4 and it kept getting stuck on “preparing”.

I read online that issue could be fixed by updating your iPhone through iTunes on Mac/PC. I did this even though my phone said it was running iOS 17.4.1-it still installed an update on my phone once connected to iTunes. Then I update my Apple Watch, it took around 40 minutes so just leave it do its thing. Battery drain is fixed!! Hope this helps

Same as everyone else with the update managed to update watch to 10.4 still same issues dropped 9% battery in about 30 minutes Someone on here said to toggle off “background app refresh” on the Apple Watch app Im trying this and so far it’s holding charge not dropped below 91% in the last 10 minutes or so so this could be a work around until Apple pull there fingers out and sort it 🙄 will update with how I get on next few hours