Apple Watch Battery Draining suddenly after Software Update

SAME!!! All of this. Watch randomly dying quickly. Stuck on software update for watch. I completely wiped my watch today and restored as new and is still having the same issue so it’s definitely related to the iPhone update. Hoping it’s fixed asap bc I use my watch all day every day.

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.

So glad to find I'm not the only one! Mine somehow depletes super fast during the night. I charge it to 100% before I sleep, put it on and it's already red in the morning. Normally it would last another day or two.

Same problem for me. Watch has had to be charged 3 times today.

update gets stuck on preparing, and when I delete the downloaded update it’s over a gig even tho the update said it was 700mb.

tried resetting the watch but makes no difference

Upgraded my iOS on my phone last night and my watch battery this morning was instantly toast.

I've also noticed that it is taking a VERY long time to charge.

I put on my watch at 11am and it was dead by 4pm.

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!

I’m having the same problem. I just spent 57 minutes on the phone with Apple Support. They ran diagnostics and got nothing. He said he hasn’t heard of anyone having this problem. However, I’m sure plenty of people have called. He said I have to take this POS watch to the Apple Store. Of course they don’t have any appointments for two days. No more Apple products for me.

This fixed the battery drain on Apple Watch issue for me: Open the watch app on your phone, open General settings, then toggle Background App Refresh to off. My watch battery is back to normal after doing that.

Me too my phone updated at night. I gabes my phone and watch at 6:30am. By 11:00 am my watch was at 3% luckily I had my charger so I put it to charge. It charged up to 80% and around 12:45 I grabbed it and put it back on my wrist. At 3:30 it was again at 10%. Whats up. And I think my iphone is also draining faster. Its 5:45pm right now and usually i have 40% left and today its at 15%. Same usage as always.

Called apple two times today and even went to the genius bar to understand what was going on. No one could help and they pretend it can’t be happening after an update on the phone. They tried to tell me that they had to fix my watch even if there was nothing wrong with the watch from diagnosis. Very disappointed with apple :(

Both my wife and my iphones updated to IOS 17.4.1 last night and out Apple Watches were dead 7 hours later (mine is a series 8 and my wife's an SE). My watch has never been below 25% until today and is now completely dead! Also, my wife and I both noticed something odd that we had never noticed before-when we took our watches off their chargers, they were noticeably warm. What is it going to take for Apple to acknowledge there is a problem and fix it! Is there any way to remove this most recent update?

Ridiculous! How is it possible that we are all having the same experience?? It's not possible! Our watches were perfect prior to this update and they want to fix the watch-and they call themselves geniuses!

I updated my phone to iOS 17.4.1 yesterday and suddenly my watch (series 9) battery stopped functioning normally. I usually charge it every 2nd day unless I use it to record a couple of workouts. Now I’m barely getting a few hours. The watch is less than I year old. I rely on it for my alarm too. Imagine my surprise when I charged it to full at 10pm only to wake at 4.20am to find it barely hanging on. A fix would be welcome.

My watch would get warm from charging and get stuck @ 50%, I would have remove from charge, wait few minutes for the watch to cool down, then put it back on the charger, repeat few times before the watch would charge to 100%. After 100% charge, watch would be dead within 5-6 hours, and I used to charge my watch every other day. Can't even update it, update is stuck on my phone, tried to restart it, doesn't do anything

This worked for my wife’s Apple Watch too - battery retaining charge now. Haven’t attempted the update again though - will wait to see what develops. I’ve messaged Apple Support on X to alert them to what’s going on & have pointed them to this thread. Fingers crossed!