Apple Watch battery drain after watchOS 11 Update

I think I have a solution for this:

I have a Series 8. Battery health reports 80% capacity (after about 2 years).

Following my upgrade to watchOS 11.01, I was running out of power around 12-13 hours into the day. This was even worse if I had a workout (I sometimes train for 3 hours in a single day.) On any regular day, my battery was down to 50% by lunch.

I did the following this week,

which has improved things a lot:

1. Update to watchOS 11.1
2. (And I think this was critical) - I un-paired and re-paired my watch (loading the last backup) with my phone right after the update.

I have done this in the past and it seems to clear up a lot of issues, particularly with power management.

Yesterday, with no workouts, I finished the day with about 25% left (at 14-15 hours). So far today, I am at 50% after 8 hours and one workout. I have another workout for two hours this evening, but I should make it to 16 hours without going to low power mode, if I’m not mistaken.

So - unpair and re-pair, loading from the backup!

After an OS update, it's common to experience an increased battery drain as certain tasks related to the update continue in the background including indexing, you should only experience this increased battery drain for a few days before it goes back to normal.

If after a couple days, your battery is not back to normal, I would recommend unpair and repairing your Apple Watch with your iPhone ⇢ Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

If anything, the update to Watch 11.0.1 made the battery drain on my AW 9 even worse. The update also added a few new problems (My watch repeatedly asked for permission to allow access to Location for Weather and other Apps, and the Watch face I use, Infograph, "lost" the Weather and Music Complications, which then dropped out of the list of available Apps so that I couldn't replace them).

In another thread Ingo2711 suggested that I unpair and then repair my watch. I did so last evening, and am happy to report that my watch seems not to be draining its battery and the missing Weather and Music Apps have returned, been added to my Watch and my watch has only asked for permission to access my Location once today. While I'll keep an eye on things, 24 hours after unpairing and repairing my AW 9, all seems well and back to normal under Watch OS 11.0.1.

Turning off Optimized Charging worked for me.

I am not sure why, as the display always shows 100% after charging. Has to be a bug.

1. Open the Settings app on your watch.
2. Scroll down, then tap Battery.
3. Tap Battery Health.
4. Turn off Optimized Charge Limit.
5. Choose Turn Off.

I have a Series 10 GPS (no cellular) with OS 11.0.1

It was down to about 1/3 the charge-life out of the box.

Turning this off returned me to normal.

Other solutions may have reset "learning" to provide temporary relief.

I have an Apple Watch SE (GPS 2nd edition)

I also noticed the same thing.

I charge it overnight put it on my wrist within 15 minutes, It goes from 100% to 68%.

After the second time I did that, after the overnight recharge, I immediately put it put the watch into “low power mode” and my battery seem to progress down more normally- been doing that for the week but today I did not do that and it went down to 68% again right after the overnight recharge.

looks like I just need to put it in low power mode until they get a new update.

Turning off Optimized Charging worked for me (Series 10, OS 11.01)

1. Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
2. Scroll down, then tap Battery.
3. Tap Battery Health.
4. Turn off Optimized Battery Charging.

I don't know why this worked, as it always displayed 100% after charge.

Bottom line, I am back to the original battery life - about 3x what I was getting.

Thanks. I turned off Live Activities as suggested and was a big improvement in battery life. At least it lasts all day now.

(Apple Watch Ultra watchos11)

This happened to me as well on my WS9, and also happened after the update to WoS 10.

The Apple diagnostic did the trick for me both times, and live activities is still enabled. If you have AppleCare, give them a call. If not, bring it into a store and they can run the same diagnostic. I think it was a mobile resource diagnostic.

Did you already force restart your watch after the latest update?

Press and hold the Digital Crown and the Side button together for about 10sec, until the Apple logo comes back again.

Turning off the Optimized Battery Charging worked for a few

of us with this same issue.

There seems to be a bug in the app for Optimized Battery

Charging.

-        

Turning off Live Activities in the Watch app

under Smart Stack (Did nothing)

-        

Turning off watch and charging overnight (Was a short-lived

fix)

F3_Pork-Roll wrote:

SOLVED!!!

You need to COMPLETLY UNPAIR your watch and set it up AS NEW!!

NOT FROM BACKUP!!

I've also disabled the Live Stack... Battery back to normal

As I've mentioned in a few other posts here... That's a **** of a lot of heavy lifting and an insane amount of hoop jumping on the part of the userbase simply to resolve a problem that none of us should have been forced to deal with in the first place!

if this issue had not been going on for approaching two weeks now with no resolution in sight I wouldn't even be commenting, but this is really starting to **** me off!

The battery drain issue is bad enough but what is this ultimately gonna do to the overall health of our watch batteries in the long run? No way to know. Unlikely no way to ever know.

I won't be wiping my watch clean and restoring it from scratch without a backup. Even if I had the time and the energy to go through all of that crap, I didn't sign up for that Level of forced user intervention when I bought this thing.

If it wasn't for the Dexcom CGM monitoring feature I'd just go back to wearing my "Oyster Date" as my daily driver until Apple got their **** together.

Yes, the itty bitty tiny watch has a itty bitty processor with an itty bitty battery. It mostly does the indexing and syncing in the background when other activities are doing little. This helps reduce heat and attempts to reduce battery consumption. By doing so, it can take up to 72 hours for battery consumption to return to normal.