Apple Watch Battery Drain after updating to 10.5

I have an newish SE2 I got in February. Had wonderful battery life until recently. I unpaired and restarted and everything suggested here. Then last night i got a weird storage is full message. Investigated and had to do with photo sync. Lowered to limit of 25 and let it sync and then turned off all syncing related to photos. Rebooted and honestly seems a lot better. Results may vary.

You will need to do a hard reset. We found this out after 10.4 update

WiFi is obviously an issue. I could fix it by restarting my FRITZ!box router instead of disabling WiFi on the watch. The problem only existed at home. At work everything was fine.

Unfortunately, lithium batteries do not age like most other batteries, including lead-acid batteries (car batteries) which gradually lose capacity over time. Lithium ion batteries lose very little of their capacity until the end, then it’s like falling off a cliff. In just a few months the batteries lose a significant portion of their capacity that they cannot power sophisticated electronics.

Here’s the life cycle of 5 different lithium ion batteries and they all have the characteristic of significant loss of capacity at the end of their lifetime.

Apple offers remote diagnostics, but I’m not sure Apple Watches can be diagnosed over the phone or internet. Apple Retail Stores can properly diagnose Apple Watches. If you’re in the US please call 1-800-MY-APPLE or outside the US, consult the support article below.

Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support

Apple Support is not here, this is a public discussion forum for Apple users to connect and assist each other.

Your issue sounds like a software issue. Hardware doesn’t fix itself for 1 ½ weeks and then decide to start using more battery capacity. Either the usage pattern changed or software updated in the background.

Do you have auto install updates turned on for your Watch apps?

Jeff Donald wrote:

Apple Support is not here, this is a public discussion forum for Apple users to connect and assist each other.

Your issue sounds like a software issue. Hardware doesn’t fix itself for 1 ½ weeks and then decide to start using more battery capacity. Either the usage pattern changed or software updated in the background.

Do you have auto install updates turned on for your Watch apps?

Jeff, thanks in advanced I did already have auto updates turned off if that's what you're referring to. I didn't see any apps that have updates enabled. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place.

I just hard booted the watch, and I am un-pairing/re-paring to my phone and restoring from back up. Last time I did this it was "normal" for about 1.5 weeks as I mentioned previously. Also, the watch gets quite warm even while on the charging. For the past few days, the charge drops to 10% within 3 hours. Prior to updating to 10.5 it was at 50%-60% after a full day(6am-11:30 pm) I typically charge when I go to bed.

If there's anything else you can offer to assist, I greatly appreciate your advise

Sorry for the lengthy/wordy post.

Thanks again

Apple Watch has to still sync with iPhone and Apple ID/iCloud account. If you’re installing the same 3rd party apps, it could be an app that has a memory leak or is stuck in a loop because of the update. Apps stuck in a loop can cause the processor to run non-stop and drain the battery in a few hours.

Hey all! I got my watch back from Apple within under a week this past Wednesday . For good measure I did reset both my phone (14 pro max) and watch(series 7 45mm). So far it’s back to normal behavior. Keeping my fingers crossed. I still have auto updates disabled,AOD is off and I still have App Store auto update and auto download off . But I did go back to my Activity Digital face that has complications. And I also re-enabled screenshots.

Thought it’d be nice to post something positive ! Still waiting for the shoe to drop though!

I had Automatic Downloads disabled, I turned off Automatic Updates . See screen shot below for inquiring minds :-)

Hope this helps either way now I know where to find this !

Fingers crossed!

Series 7, recently updated to 10.5 - has a noticeably faster battery drain for me. I use always-on and wear it to bed for sleep tracking. Previously I could always get a full day out of the watch. I will charge every evening around 5pm, at which point it would “end” the day with 30% charge. The last few months on v10.4 it would be down to 10-20% but almost always make it through the day (could be from that update or age). Then after this update it keeps hitting 10% around 2pm and I have to go into low power mode.

I originally had not changed anything during the update process. Since updating to 10.5 I have turned off background refresh on a number of apps, restarted the watch multiple times, turned the brightness down to the lowest option, and 2 days ago turned off hand-off which I discovered could be a problem after some digging. None of these have seemingly made much improvement, which is why I’m wondering if there is a bug, or other new feature introduced that is causing this faster power consumption.

Thank you, Jeff Donald! My AW9 suddenly went from lasting crazy long hours to losing power rapidly. I didn't notice until it told me at 10%. By the time I started charging, it was down to 7% and wasn't increasing. After I did the forced restart and unpair-pairing, it's charging normally, and I'll keep a close "watch" over it the next 72 hours. Thanks for taking the time and energy to help people like me! Much respect to you!!!

I am having the same issue. I have the 45mm series 7 watch, and iphone 14 pro max I did do a force restart, and reset the phone. This helped for about 1 week, then yesterday, the battery drain happened again. As of this morning at 6am, it was fully charged, by 9 am was down to 10%. Prior to updating to 10.5 I was at 50% from 6am - 11:30pm. Now I can't go more then 3 hours . Plus the watch gets very warm. Very frustrating. This feel like the days when being forced into a buying a new device after updates.

I also:

• reset the watch(2nd time doing this)
• turn off photo sync
• turn off recent music
• disable Always On display

Any info/ advice is greaty appreciated.

Disabling Automatic downloads, and Automatic updates and then reset and re-paired to my phone . Worked great for a week then this morning i got less than 3 hours and battery was drained to 9%.

WTF!!! I don’t understand, so frustrating!

Hello all,

I’ve been dealing with the battery drainage since updating to 10.5. I’ve done all the usual steps , unpairing and pairing, hard resetting on phone and watch etc….I also went to local Apple Store they said I’ve done all the possible trouble shooting steps. They offered to send the watch out to appple for evaluation free of charge, which I did.While they have it they will supposedly reload the watch. In the interim I’m borrowing my daughter’s series 7 same watch but the smaller one. The issue did follow me. Now I’m wondering if the issue could somehow be linked to my apple account??

i also changed to a basic watch face with no complications, no difference.

also my sine has the series7 SE with 10.5 no issues. Weird.

Did you wait 72 hours for the forced restart to work? If it failed, did you unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone? Please reread my post and follow the instructions I posted.