Apple watch battery draining quickly after iOS 26.0.2 Update.

Downgrading watchOS is only supported for a short time after the latest watchOS update.

First, try to force restart your iPhone and Apple Watch:

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

To force restart your watch, press and hold the Digital Crown and the Side button together for about 10sec, until the Apple logo comes back again.

If this does not help, unpairing and connecting it again to your iPhone without using the latest backup would be the next step, to rule out defective data in the backup. You should only lose watch faces that you have set up, your Health data is stored in iCloud and will sync back.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

26.2 broke all my stuff again, but it was 2 weeks after the upgrade. Don’t ask me how or why.

I went to apple and they ran diagnostics on both my day and night time watches. They said it was because my watches were running WiFi and Bluetooth the whole day and WiFi should be reserved for when you are out of Bluetooth range. None of their fixes of restarting worked and they wanted me to turn off one watch while not using it. I’m not sure that would work, but if my non-worn watch was taking over Bluetooth, I guess that can do it, but they also suggested using low power mode and other longer duration measures for my daily wear… no.

Unpaired and re-paired and boom, went from 10 hours back to 20+ on my ultra 2, and 5 hours back to 11+ on my series 6.

It’s not too painful with iCloud backups, just inconvenient.

In the evening I restart and restore watch from backup, charged to 99% at 9pm, now at 7am a have 78% (I sleep in watch). Now battery is ok, like before update to 26.0.2.

As a follow up, I’m getting about 300% battery utility after unpairing and repairing.

Where the battery would be dead at the end of the day, it is now between 60-66% remaining. All scenarios starting at 100% with battery optimization on.

Unpairing was successful for me.

Hey guys after I contacted Apple support regarding the watch…

A new update has arrived for the watch 26.1 and after the update my Apple Watch series 9 is now working good, the disconnections from the iPhone have stopped and the battery has returned to normal operation (lasts for a day or more).

Hope it works out for everyone 🙏🏻

Try wipe and restore from backup

If after rebooting both devices there is no change in the battery discharge rate consider the following:

Apple recommends that any watch whose battery health is below 80% get a new battery.

The cost is $99 for Series 4 or newer and $79 for older series watches. I was told that for some older watches rather than replace the battery they just replace the entire watch itself. I was told I would have to give up the watch for about 2 weeks. At the time I couldn't do it - am too tied to my iPhone/Watch and AirPods Pro. For someone in their 9th decade I'm acting like a teeny bopper. 🤭

Press the stem to get to the apps. Go to General ➙ Battery. Under Battery Health it will say either all is OK or get battery replaced. I'm below 80% so have gotten into the habit of putting my watch on a charging stand for about an hour while I'm at my desk in the afternoon. It works for me as I'm retired.

Hard restart doesn’t work for me, do restore.

My Watch (Series 8) has same issue - rapidly draining battery at least 3 days in a row, probably longer, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. WatchOS 26 or 26.0.2 seems to coincide with the issue. Today I measured and it’s draining at about 9% per hour. Battery health is good at 90%.

My old Series 5 had a battery health of 80% after almost 3 years of daily use and workout. At this point in time I had to charge the watch twice a day and I was glad as it finally reached 79% and I could get the battery replaced under Apple Care+, which is included in the extended warranty plan at no cost.

Apple replaced the whole unit, as far as I know, the always replace the whole watch, if you are paying the service fee for battery service. In most cases, those are refurbished watches and also have a new serial number.

capitan.pis wrote:

when did you perform the update to watches 26? Consider what was written bellow, it can take 2 or 3 months to the watch to "get back" to the previous performance. In my case, it was reduce to a charge every 12 hours and now it is back to 26-27 hours after 2 years and 9 months of use

Not 2 or 3 months. It's 2 or 3 days. If something's still wrong after a week or so, the problem is not the update.

Unless your watch is an Ultra, it was never advertised to have much more than about 18 hours of battery life.

Please read the complete thread, it took me 2, 3 months to get it back to normal, and I was not the only one. Read below post by Stéphane298 four days ago.

My watch is an 8 series watch and when it was new it lasted about 30 hours between recharge though I recharged every 24 hours. Within the usage, it started obviously losing capacity and now it is around 26 27 hours which anyway I don't need as I recharge every 24 hours.

I have no idea what is advertised or not, I am telling you how it works for me. Sure, there are many features the watch allows you to control in order to save battery life, such as the background of the watch and notifications handle and Apps working in the background. I made sure I take all what I need from the watch, and regarding things I don't need nor use, I set the settings so the consumption will be as less as possible.

Having the same issue after upgrading to 26.0.2. Pre-update, I would charge my AW8 to 95% around 06:00 everyday, and by 21:00 I would still have 30-40% battery life remaining. Now I am at 20% around 16:00. And that last 20% burns down real fast. Also, the rate of battery drain appears to increase each day. I tried the hard restart with no results. I have not tried a restore from backup.

This is a problem for now. I bought an extended Apple Care. I checked the battery health level at 81%, then after the upgrade, it went UP to 84%. No kidding. Others explained that it is not an absolute read of battery capacity, and algorithms can change it.

What it means financially to me is that I have to charge a watch every 6 hours, and there is no hope of battery or watch replacement. Three years of use.