Apple Watch Battery Drain after updating to 10.5

I experienced the same thing. I’m using series 5 and would normally last the whole day with always on display turned on. But after 10.5 updates it only lasted 2-3 hours. I unpaired/paired and it does the same thing. I’m waiting for the next update to get away with this cuz it’s a bug! It’s frustrating to wear a watch thats off and drained battery.

lmckillo wrote:

... I’d get two days out of my series 4 watch

You should not try to run your Series 4 for 2 days before charging. Chances are you are taking your battery dangerously low, which is a very good way to destroy a Li-Ion battery.

Li-Ion batteries DO NOT like being drained to zero, or near zero.

In an emergency, sure, put the Apple Watch in Low Power mode, and stretch it out until you can get to a charger.

But it is good practice to recharge your Series 4 every night while you are sleeping.

Just saw watch go from 71% to 57% in 1 hour. Nothing running but heart

monitor. About ready to go back to my Garmin. At this rate wont be able to monitor sleep as it will lose charge in 7 hours!! Watch 8. OS 10.5

Apple Watch 7..same issues. I’ve done a hard reset on it probably a million times. I’ve unpaired it, paired it back shut phone and watch off then repaired. Unpaired, reset watch to an update that was before 10..Nothing has worked. Any other ideas out there? This was only happening after 10.5 update.

Hi Jeff - I haven't tried your advice yet, but it seems like people are having good success with it. I've been experiencing the same issue with my Series 7 watch. I was able to have watch fully charged before bedtime and then was typically putting it on the charger around 4PM-5PM the following day. Now, I'm watching the battery life drop dramatically (about 10-12% each hour) and the moment I perform any activity, the battery is draining really fast which is not normal. Before finding this thread, I did unpair and repair my watch. It seemed to be better for about 24 hours but then battery life started dropping again. Maybe I didn't perform the unpairing and pairing properly?

The other issue I'm noticing is that the "find my" features from both the watch and the phone are delayed. It's random. Typically, I could press the button on my watch to find my phone and get the immediate ping on the phone in my house to know where it is. This feature now only works intermittently. Sometimes it's immediate. Sometimes it's delayed by 15-30 seconds. And then sometimes, the phone never pings. The same in reverse from my phone. If I press the button on my phone control center to "find my watch", it might be immediate, delayed, or never happen. This was NEVER the case before. It makes me wonder if there's some issue with the bluetooth connectivity between the watch and the phone? And is that making the battery life on the watch drain faster as maybe it's not connected to the phone properly?

Thanks for your help!

I've done this forced restart now twice. I have never had an issue with the battery running out before. Now every night before even 7 pm it is almost out of battery. I can't get in all my steps or anything else because I have to put it on the charger. This has to be due to a recent update. Please have them look into this because it is ridiculous and I have had many versions of the apple watch and never had a problem before now. Thank you

Thanks for the response. I have read and re-read your post. I don't need to do it again. I have not yet unpaired because I only saw the first solution in another thread about the forced restart and it didn't work, so now I did it again and now have to wait 72 hours yet again to see if it works and if not, try unpairing and pairing, but this is still ridiculous to have to jump through all these hoops because of something that was caused by an update when someone could simply fix it and send us another update. And still every day I have to put the watch back on the charger hours before I have ever had to since I have had the watch. Is anyone even looking into this issue to put a fix in place? Thank you!

ok since I had already done a forced restart that didn't work, I went ahead and unpaired my apple watch from the iPhone and re-paired it this morning. Now it has even less of a charge than before. I usually get up around 5:30 am, I put on my watch within 15 min. and it lasted until just before I was going to go to bed around 8:30 ish at night. Recently I have been having to put it back on the charger to do low power around 6:30 pm. Today I got up around 7 am and by 4pm, I had to put it on low power with 7% left and by 5:30pm it was dead and I had to put it on the charger. This is not working. It used to last at least 14 hours and now it lasted only 9 hours today before having 7% left. Please fix this issue. I followed your instructions and it did not work. Thank you!

I did. I did the reset first because I saw it on another post and waited the time you said and it did nothing. So then I did the reset again but because I found this post, so because I had already did the reset earlier and waited the right amount of time, I did the unpairing and re-pairing. This should not be this complicated for all of your users. Again, is anyone looking into fixing the issue that they created? This is Apple's fault and not ours and we should not have do jump through this many hoops just to get a watch that we paid a lot of money for to work properly

Well here we go again. It’s getting to the stage now where I dread applewatch updates. I’m another user who is unable to keep my watch charged for more than 16 hours, thanks to the latest update.

I’ve paired and unpaired my series 5 watch, straight from when it was 100% and just doing that has drained it to 74% so will have charge it yet again later in the day. Getting very tired of having to perform additional resets etc in order to try and maintain charge, if it works at all that is. Apple really need to address this, but it seems they just aren’t.

Thanks for coming back.

No, I haven’t changed the battery, as I don’t think I’ve needed to, to be honest. I usually charge it to 100% which takes place before lunchtime every day and it lasts until the same time, the following day. I sleep with it on and use the in built sleep app, plus alarm. I always have same Infograph watch face, with various complications added, but I don’t tend to use anything else apart from occasional messages, making/taking a call, which is rare or an ECG. It maybe why it’s kept going quite well perhaps, I don’t know. By the evening, I’m usually down to about 50-60% and when I do charge later the following morning, I still have about 25% so it would go a bit longer than 24 hrs if I let it, This is why this latest update is so irritating, as with many of them lately.

I've done all this and for the last week I had hope because it seemed to be better but now today, when I have actually done less, it is already down to 10% after less than 11 hours. This seems ridiculous that Apple is doing nothing to fix this issue when it is their update that caused the whole thing. I have had numerous apple watches and have never in years had an issue like this. How can we report this to Apple so they will fix it???

I updated to 10.5 this past weekend and I charged my watch overnight like always. The next morning I put on the watch and it was dead by noon. Maybe 4 hours of life. My watch is now useless. Is there a way to revert to previous OS version. GREAT QA TESTING APPLE!!

Apple needs to fix this update process. I didn't want to update but now that my iphone is on iOS 17 it required the update for the watch to function with their app. It's been over 24 hours since the update and I've reset the phone, unpaired, forced the reboot etc. Prior to the update I would have 20% remaining after 16-17 hours normal usage. Now the battery is dead after 5 hours. If it is the indexing, Apple should at least be throttling that process so that the watches don't die after a few hours use. Apple needs a class action suit filed against them for this. So much for "it just works"!

I’ve been waiting for a fix for a long time — since 10.4. I’ve tried all/most of the fixes (multiple times). I had hoped there would be a fix in 10.5 — but I’m still waiting/hoping.

These days, sometimes I can go a day or two on a normal battery, but that’s it. The dramatic decreases continue regularly.