Apple Watch Battery Draining suddenly after Software Update

Same here. New watch bought at the beginning of March. I was getting nearly 48 hours on a charge. The on 4/10 I installed iOS 17.4.1. The next day I charged my watch fully before going to work and it was dead by noon. Today I put a full charge on the watch at 7AM and at 9:33AM it’s at 60%. It might make it to lunch today but only because I’ve turned off practically every feature and notification. Apple you need to fix this!

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 don’t know whether it’s related to the recent 17.4.1 update, but saw the same thing last night: my watch was in low-power mode, at a point when it’s usually about 50% full. It apparently ran dry in the middle of the afternoon.

I decided to try upgrading to watchOS 10.4, and got the dreaded hang in “Preparing”. I tried several times to delete the downloaded file, restart the phone and watch, even erased my watch and restored it. But it was still hanging in the same place.

Finally I saw a tip from a few years ago and gave it a try, I turned off “wrist detection”. This seemed to make the difference. It made it through “Preparing….” and “Installing…”, and now seems to be happily running watchOS 10.4.

I have no idea yet whether this will have any bearing on the battery draining issue.

I updated my iPhone to iOS 17.4.1 and basically killed my Series 8 watch. Two days in a row now complete discharge to dead in about 4 hours. Take a long time to charge up to the point that I can communicate with it. Can’t even use it anymore. Going to try a reset but from what I am reading here not hopeful. I wish Apple would respond to this stream as this is clearly connected to the 17.4.1 iOS phone update.

The same thing happened for me. My phone’s software was updated two days ago, but I have not updated the Watch software. I was going to try to remove the update from the watch, but I’m still on 10.3.1 on the watch. Still, for the last two days, my watch will only hold a charge for five hours. It was perfectly fine and holding a charge for longer than 24 hours before that.

obviously, the problem is the new update on the phone, but I don’t know what the solution is. I really depend on my watch!

Jeff Donald, I do really appreaciate that you are trying to help us here, but if the previous person just wrote that unpairing and force restart didn’t help, what are you constantly pasting your answer again and again? I am always full of hope when a new answer appears here, because I personally tried EVERYTHING, also apple support multiple times. My case is even escalated to the engineers, so they have agreed I as a simple user have tried my everything…

they said they are working on it, but still no new update unfortunatelly.

For the user who says might sell their series 8 and buy new one: these software issues come usually from our phones, so the problem didn’t solve for me for ex. with new watches, I have ordered 2 SE (2023) and a Series 9, all brand new, just to confirm this problem to the support as well

Update your watch.

I was able to fix the update issue with updating via watch…. Not the phone. I’m not sure if it resolved the drain issue yet.

Turn off the automatic update for the watch on your iPhone using the watch app.

My issue is resolved after installing a new release in my Apple Watch

F/U. I called Apple support and they started a case. Appears to be a software issue.

I have exactly the same issue. Upgraded my phone to 17.4.1 last night. Took my Apple watch off charge this morning as usual. By 2pm watch was on 10% battery. I haven’t used the watch at all, hardly even checked the time. It usually lasts until the following morning. Definitely a compatibility issue between phone IOS 17.4.1 and the watch.

Tried to upgrade Apple Watch but it’s stuck in Preparing.

Apple, what do I do?

Same here. Updated iPhone 11 this am since it don’t update on its own overnight and watch (Series 8 -1 year old)was 100% when started update. Three hours later down to 34% now another hour later I’m at 10%! Apple fix this now!!!

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.

I’m in exactly the position with Apple Watch SE. Charged yesterday to 100% and dead by morning.

Recharged this morning and dead by 1pm. Recharged again and 5% by 4pm, when not in use and I was stationary. Spoke to Apple by message to be told my battery is fine and to not charge it to 100%.

I can’t update the watch, it’s been stuck on preparing for 2 days. I tried deleting the update and re-downloaded and still nothing.

Apple support were rubbish and I booked an appointment at the Genius Bar but sounds like I’m not alone!

they need to fix this. It’s ridiculous.