Apple watch battery draining quickly after iOS 26.0.2 Update.

My (APW)10 battery drain as early as 8hours between charges after upgrading to iOS 26.0.2. What should i do to maintain the battery life

Charge to 100% at midnight and dead by 5AM alarm. Everyday All happened after ios26 update. Disgusting. Can't use it for golf. Now just barely jewellery.

Earlier my Apple Watch Ultra used to hold charge for one and half day at-least. After ios 26.0.2 the battery is draining out in less than 24 hours .

Same issue here, never had this before after an update. Apple Watch 7

This is the way. I wish it were a bit easier though.

Thanks, man. I will try it's I am totally desperate

during those 2 weeks you just used your watch as usual? or you tried re-pair and all those advices to try to fix it?

Thank you for sharing the good news, this will also help other users. 🙂

great, I will definitely try this. I will keep you posted about how this goes for my watch.

Thanks

You're welcome 🙂

If the battery health drops below 80%, you should get the battery replaced. I had to recharge my old Series 5 twice a day when art reached 80%. After the replacement the battery life went back to normal.

Have a look at the related article and the estimate for the battery service:

Apple Watch Service and Repair - Apple Support

Did you already try to force restart your Apple Watch after the latest update?

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 pairing the Apple Watch again has helped other users.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Also have a look at the posts in this discussion:

Apple Watch battery draining fast - Apple Community

Im having the same issue. I charged it before I went to bed at 9:30..Twelve hours later it's dead. Ive done nothing except sleep. Before it would keep the charge up until the evening. so maybe I could go twenty hours on that one charge. Now it's barely making twelve.

I validated a fix in here:

1) (after verifying a backup) go into the watch app,

2) go to all watches

3) go to the (i) next to the watch

4) scroll down and select unpair apple watch

5) follow the prompts (without cancelling your cell if applicable

6) when ready, add watch back

7) set for self

8) customize to select from backup

Proof/why:

I have an Ultra 2 with 98% battery life and a series 6 with 89% battery life. Put them both on 26.0.2 and 26.1. Battery time degraded terribly after 26.0.2, where 13 hours on my ultra would tap out… it wasn’t until my series 6 (repurposed daily to a sleep watch) didn’t make it 8 hours and drove me to fix it.

After doing my ultra 2 and giving it a day, it went down to 30% after 14 hours of use (nice improvement), after it finished its indexing or what not, 2 days, I was back up to 45% after 15 hours. I didn’t spot check my 6’s battery when I woke up, but it wasn’t dead and had good time left.

I encourage trying the unpair despite the pain of waiting for it to load from backups and resetting up credit cards.