Apple Watch Battery Drain after updating to 10.5

What is required is a forced restart of your Apple Watch. A forced restart is more than just turning your Watch off and on. Observe the battery usage for the next 24 to 72 hours. If there is no improvement you’ll need to unpair the Watch from your iPhone, force restart the Watch and the iPhone and lastly pair the two devices. Battery usage will return to normal in 24 to 72 hours.

Force restart Apple Watch - Apple Support

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

The odds are a 3rd party app or complication is stuck syncing or having issues supporting the update. Try the above well known fix and you should be good in a few days.

Do a forced restart of your Apple Watch. If you’re unfamiliar with how to do a forced restart please review the Apple Support article I linked below. After the forced restart the battery usage should return to former levels in 24 to 72 hours. After an update the Watch performs indexing and syncing of apps and data in the background and this can consume a lot of battery power.

If high battery usage persists after 72 hours please unpair your Apple Watch and iPhone, restart both devices and then pair them again.

If your Apple Watch is stuck on the Apple logo - Apple Support

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

It will take 24-48 hours for the new operating system to finish it house keeping, as well as resync things it wants from the iPhone. Power cycle the Apple Watch and your iPhone (at least once, but maybe once or twice a day until the Apple Watch battery consumption returns to normal. The MacObserver.com How To Fix WatchOS 10.3 Battery Drain Issue on Apple Watch https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/fix-apple-watch-battery-drain-issue-after-watchos-10-3-update/ Also see: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250007078 For some steps that are not in the MacObserver article. iPhone -> "Watch" app -> General -> Reset -> Reset Sync Data Again it may take a day or two for the rsync'ing of data to settle down. As a point of reference, my Apple Watch Series 4 with 90% battery health maximum capacity, was back to normal after 24 hours (watchOS 10.5). I did 1 mid-day recharge, and I power cycled my Apple Watch and iPhone twice.

Did the what Jeff Donald recommended above and after unpairing and pairing, it is now retaining the charge like it use to. This has happened to me after the last two updates, so this will be a standard update procedure going forward.

I followed Jeff Donald's advice of a "Forced Restart" yesterday and it appears to have fixed the problem (if you were following my notes on the above post, it is now 4:30pm and my watch is at 21% today). This clearly does something different than just powering it off and back on again.

Forced Restart: hold down side button and crown at the same time for about 10 seconds until the apple logo appears.

Please follow this path,

iPhone > Watch app > App Store > Automatic Downloads > switch off App Downloads, App Updates and In-App Content.

When a third party releases a poor update and the Watch automatically installs it at night, performance including battery consumption can change dramatically and seemingly overnight.

Let’s give that a try for a week or two and see if consumption improves etc.

What is required is a forced restart of your Apple Watch. A forced restart is more than just turning your Watch off and on. Observe the battery usage for the next 24 to 72 hours. If there is no improvement you’ll need to unpair the Watch from your iPhone, force restart the Watch and the iPhone and lastly pair the two devices. Battery usage will return to normal in 24 to 72 hours.

Force restart Apple Watch - Apple Support

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

lmckillo wrote:

I’ve tried pairing , deleting the app, forced reset , complete reset . I’ve tried it all and still the battery drains extremely fast. Frustrating as I’d get two days out of my series 4 watch

I never got 2 days out of my Series 4, which I am wearing now. I do get a full day, with an hour of either walk or cycling exercise each day.

When I upgraded to watchOS 10.5 the first 24 hours had high battery usage. I power cycled twice, and did one middle of the day recharge.

After 24 hours, my Series 4 was back to normal.

If you have 3rd party apps and complications, they could be an issue.

If you have a lot of contacts that need to be synced, that could be an issue.

Try Apple Watch iPhone App > General > Reset > Reset Sync Data

The MacObserver.com

How To Fix WatchOS 10.3 Battery Drain Issue on Apple Watch

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/fix-apple-watch-battery-drain-issue-after-watchos-10-3-update/

Also see:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250007078

For some steps that are not in the MacObserver article.

I found turning off WIFI on the watch for my Series 5 returned the battery life to normal

It looks like there is some driver issue for WIFI in the new software causing it to drain the battery

I think that Apple may have made the wake on wrist raise too sensitive. I've noticed the display turns on much more often now...especially when using the keyboard etc. I can get a full days worth of usage now but I have to set/disable the following:

1) Wake on Wrist Raise (off)

2) Wifi (Off)

3) Automatic updates / App updates (off)

4) Background App Refresh (off)

5) Brightness (minimum)

6) Reduce motion (on) -- have always had this set to on.

Prior to the update I had wake on wrist, wifi, app updates/refresh set to on. Brightness was medium. But I still was able to get a full day of battery life with normal usage.

Do a forced restart of your Apple Watch. If you’re unfamiliar with how to do a forced restart please review the Apple Support article I linked below. After the forced restart the battery usage should return to former levels in 24 to 72 hours. After an update the Watch performs indexing of data in the background and this can consume a lot of battery power.

If high battery usage persists after 72 hours please unpair your Apple Watch and iPhone, restart both devices and then pair them again.

If your Apple Watch is stuck on the Apple logo - Apple Support

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Hi everyone -

Just wanted to update that I did have a chance to follow Jeff’s advice. I forced restarted, waited over 72 hours, and battery continued to drain rapidly. Did a unpair and repair which, like last time, seemed to help for about 24 hours, then my same issues described in my earlier message started up again. I finally reached out to Apple Support since I maintain AppleCare+ on the watch. Surprisingly, they didn’t run any diagnostics when I described my issue. They allowed me to do an express replacement for the watch and that arrived yesterday. I’m now been using the replacement watch for about 24 hours with no issue. I still don’t believe it was a hardware problem, but it does make me wonder if it was a software problem that they are still struggling to find a solution for. I’ll keep you posted if my replacement runs into any issues.

AW9 updated to 10.5 and then extreme battery drain. On March 28th, I followed Jeff Donald's excellent advice (reset, unpair/pair), and the battery drain issue was resolved. (Thank you again, Jeff!)

Since then I've noticed two changes:

1) the battery drains more quickly than before 10.5 (but nothing crazy), so I'm going to keep checking that;

2) FIND MY has become erratic on the AW. Now when I leave my workplace (where I leave an MBAir), Find My "Notice" (often audio on Airpods Pro2) sometimes (not always) tells me I've left two items behind in my workplace. Nope, only the MBA, but it seems to include my AW, which is on my wrist. My AW and iPhone have both been in use for at least a few minutes before this, so I wonder if the Find My functions were altered with the 10.5 update.

I don't know what Apple is going to do, but lots of Apple Watch owners are experiencing problems because of (not just after...) the 10.5 update, so Apple needs to respond and make this right ASAP.

You didn’t wait up to 72 hours to give your watch and iPhone the time it needs to finish its low level functions, syncing, indexing etc. The Watches don’t have near the processing power of an iPhone. It takes a little time.

Do a forced restart of your Apple Watch. If you’re unfamiliar with how to do a forced restart please review the Apple Support article I linked below. After the forced restart the battery usage should return to former levels in 24 to 72 hours. After an update the Watch performs indexing of data in the background and this can consume a lot of battery power.

If high battery usage persists after 72 hours please unpair your Apple Watch and iPhone, restart both devices and then pair them again.

If your Apple Watch is stuck on the Apple logo - Apple Support

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support