Apple Watch battery drain after watchOS 11 Update

I had the same problem, at 10% (from 80%) after 10 hours... now turned off live activities and at 66% (from 80%, so 14% used) after 6 hours. That seems more like normal usage.

Turning off Smart Stack/Live activities alone didn't do it. But restarting watch after that seems to have done it (down only 7% after 2 hours this morning).

Turn off the watch. Place it in the charger overnight. It solved my massive battery drain issue. I left my Smart Stack live activities enabled.

Charged 20min ago, checked the battery is already at 89%.

Restarting the watch seems to help, 6h after full charge battery is at 90%, but after a sequential charge, the behaviour repeats, so I reboot it pretty much every day now.

Kind of frustrating tbh

As probably mentioned before, everybody having issues with the battery life after the watchOS 11.0 upgrade, should use the Feedback link to tell Apple directly about it:

Apple does not follow these discussions, and this is the only way to make them aware of such problems.

Feedback - Apple Watch - Apple

Retnav46 wrote:

All tips for "saving battery life" are not useful. My watch was fine, prior to watch OS 11.0. Now it's not. I would hope that my series 8 watch is good enough to support updated software.

It's not your fault. It's not any of our faults. Your AW8 is perfectly fine to be running whatever this update is.

Look at all the brand new series 10 and Ultra owners posting on here with the same exact problem. It has nothing to do with the hardware. It has everything to do with Apple totally FUBARing this update, and then hanging us all out to dry while they take their sweet time with getting a much needed update out there ahead of their stupid regular schedule.

I'm pretty sure they're seriously gonna make us wait until October 24 or whenever 18.1 comes out before we see a fix to this.

And that's assuming that they actually fix it in the next update. 🙄

P.S I agree with you 100% that all the battery saving advice is BS in this context. We shouldn't be the ones jumping through hoops to make the watch work normally right now. I'm not gonna do a **** thing to mine. Other than maybe putting it in the drawer until they get this thing fixed.

I gave my son a new Cellular Apple Watch 9 in June 2024 to be used as a standalone watch (without paring it with an iPhone). The feature was called Apple Watch for a Family Member, and now it's called Apple Watch for a Child, but it's the same thing. It worked beautifully until a few days ago. It easily lasted the entire day (until late night) on Cellular with him texting to his friends multiple times per day and even making occasional calls. As of a few days ago, he started complaining about his Apple Watch battery draining too quickly and not lasting through the day. I believe the watch updated itself to watchOS 11.0 (or 11.0.1). I will need to check the version.

Yesterday, I got myself an Apple Watch Ultra 1 (it was on great sale on Amazon) and set it up as a new watch for myself. I realized a few hours after I activated it (without even having cellular activated yet) that it drained 40% in like 4 hours. I was floored. It's almost 4:00 PM, and it's now at 31%. It took it off the charger at 6:00 AM this morning. I was forced to update the software to 11.0.1, as it wouldn't activate on the older software. The update itself failed multiple times, but it's a different story.

Now I've come across this thread. This is a legit issue. I bought the Apple Watch Ultra to get a 2-day battery life (or at least over 24 hours). My original idea was to activate my Ultra as a standalone watch (Apple Watch for a Family Member), which I actually did do this morning. But then I realized that there were a lot of features missing. I couldn't add any credit cards to the wallet on it except for the Apple Card. I couldn't add my work O365 account to it even though there is an option to add an Outlook.com account, but it only supports individual (non-corporate accounts). As I started digging deeper, I realized that setting the Apple Watch for a Family Member would not provide me the features that I needed to have, so I reset the Apple Watch again and activated it "for myself" to be paired with the iPhone. So, granted, the watch was activated twice while on this battery charge, but still, I can see the battery percentage melting away in front of my eyes even after I finished all the activation. I activated the cellular on it (T-Mobile) and made a couple calls while having powered my iPhone down. Maybe I spent about 2-3 minutes on two phone calls combined. There is no justification for the battery discharging.

I've read in this thread about deactivating "Live Activities" under "Smart Stack" and then restarting the watch, which I just did. I also disabled a bunch of notifications on the Watch from iPhone apps and uninstalled a bunch of Watch companion apps that I didn't need. Still, the battery seems to be draining like there is no tomorrow.

Hi all,

Since watchOS 11.1 was released, I have experienced significant improvement in battery life. I could say it is back to life. Despite the improvement, when checking the battery stats in the menu, i don't see the charge/discharge history . It's like this has stopped tracking battery usage completely as the graph is completely empty.

This first shot on the graph shows the battery charged to 100%, but below that, it says it was charged to 48% 2 hours ago. On the graph, you might notice the green bars at the end stop.

This other shot was taken next morning at 6:40 still saying last charged at 20:25 to 48%

This last shot was taken just a few minutes ago, at 17:02 today, on 30th October and it the grap is completely empty while it still states last charged on Monday to 48%.

I am happy that they at least fixed the battery draining issue but it seems that the system broke somewhere else.

Is there somebody else facing this battery usage statistic issue since updating to 11.1?

Have you unpaired the Watch and then paired them again? What iOS version are you using for your iPhone and Watch?

Did you already install the latest iOS 18.3 and watchOS 11.3 updates?

Had the same and entered panic mode (removed many apps such as walkie-talkie, tides, and several others + switched off a lot of background sync for at least a dozen of apps). Will wait for a fix and then I’ll try to restore what I removed.

Yeah...This is the WORST battery issue I have had with an Apple product in recent memory, and I own at least (1) device in every major product category Apple currently offers!

My 45mm Series 9 just turned 1 year old last week and until these latest 11.0 and 11.01 updates I was more than satisfied with the battery life. I have always charged my watch back up to 100% at around 5:30PM every night with about 15% to 25% battery charge remaining when I would place the watch on my charger stand most days.

Now I am getting battery charge alerts hours before the usual charge time with often less than 10% battery remaining as early as 3:30PM! The watch can not currently make it through a full 24 hour period without coming very very close to being at 0% charge remaining! Since I am not usually back at home until after 5PM, there is no simple way to charge my watch back up so much earlier than my usual 5:30PM schedule. Apple really needs to get to the bottom of this ASAP since the current situation has destroyed my Apple Watch's viability as my daily driver!

And before anyone chimes in with the usual finger pointing away from the actual cause of the issue at hand...

I have changed NOTHING on my watch in terms of software and typical use case. The only thing that has changed has been the recent update to 11.0 and then recently to 11.01. This situation is not sustainable for the majority of us out here who rely heavily on this product's ability to run a full 24 hours between charges!!!

"Disabling Live Activities seems to have solved it. "

Being forced to disable features you were previously using in order to get the same battery performance you had before an OS update can hardly be considered a viable fix to a problem.

That most recent post from someone who did the full wipe/reset and reinstall of their Apple Watch, only to have it revert back to having the same exact battery drain issue a week later is exactly why I refused to even consider doing that with my AW9. I've been down this road with Apple before.

This type of issue can't be fixed from the user's end. That is simply because there is something seriously wrong with the 11.01 Version of watchOS that Apple needs to address, and I Strongly believe that until that is done, all of these hoops people are willingly jumping through trying to get their watch to behave itself is just a waste of time. And I would go further to say it's probably causing more harm than good in the long run.

Speaking to the official Apple Support might not be enough.

Let them know directly about these issues in writing by using one of the Product Feedback links.

The more users do this, the more attention will this issue get from the watchOS development team.