Watch OS 3 Draining Battery Very Quickly

You have to update to iOS 10 to get Watch OS 3.

Also, as many people said, the watch may spend CPU on updating apps, indexing, configuring etc. which would explain that for many of us the initial dreadful battery life resolved after a few days.

Haven't had any problems with battery life yet but I'm gonna keep an eye on this post...

I did this and it worked for me too. It could of course be that a few days have past, and like other people have said "it'll settle down after a few days". Either way, I'm glad it's working now as WatchOS 3 is a big improvement.

Running Watch OS3 and at 33% now. Not as good as Watch OS2 for sure, but not really bad either. I have definitely noticed a decrease in battery since the update though

I had this problem also and here is what worked for me. After updating to iOS 10 and watchOS 3 I first tried closing all the apps in the new dock of the watch. No improvement. I then tried powering off the watch and restarting. No improvement. I next tried unpairing and re-pairing the watch to the phone. This was a long process but I noticed on the Watch app on the phone, scroll down to list of watch apps, several of them were installing for a long time and didn't finish installing after 2 hours. I thought they might have gotten stuck so I unchecked the option to "Show App on Apple Watch" for each of the problematic apps. I then checked the option for each of the apps to "Show App on Apple Watch" one at a time. They each installed within a few seconds to a minute at most. Powered down the watch and restarted it. Yippee!! Only used 6% of battery in 6 hours of light use! This is typical battery usage for me before updating to watchOS 3. Hope this might work for others.

I'm seeing a big dip in battery performance on watch OS3 too. Not quite as drastic as some of the reports here but disappointing nonetheless. Having installed OS3 almost a week ago I don't think blame can be attributed to indexing etc as it's had plenty of time to settle down.

Before I would wear the watch from 6 am til 10 pm and often see 40% approx. left. So it was only losing 3.75% approx. an hour. I don't use workouts or anything. Mainly look at the notifications and used the music glance occasionally.

Now it's dropping about 5 - 6% each hour with the exact same usage habits. So that basically in the same time period 6 am til 10 pm it is down to single figures in battery percentage remaining. It's just as well I don't use any of the fitness features like workout or else the watch I'm sure wouldn't even get me through my working day.

Pretty disappointed. I understand things change but OS 3 has been a backwards step for me. Weakened battery life, loss of glances (I used to like the Music glance).

Thanks,

Wayne

same here... 2,5 hours 30% battery is gone... 100% to 70% in two and a half hours.

SO I tried the unpairing of the watch as suggested. Big mistake. My watch has used 5% in the last half hour, just sitting on the bedside table.

at that rate I will be lucky to get 10 hours use from it.

watch os3 has basically trashed my watch!

to say I an unimpressed would be an understatement.

koocmj: I feel your pain. I know you unpaired and re-paired your watch. But did you open the Watch app on your iPhone as I described and scroll down to the status of the individual apps? Any apps that have status of "Installing" should be stopped by tapping the right carret > symbol and then choosing to now show on the Watch. After all of these are stopped, go back and tap to show them on the watch one at a time. It should only take a few minutes for each app to load to the watch. Hope this solves your problem.

TThanks Geneland. I did try that, nothing was stalled. In fact I only have on third party app on the watch. Did you find an itital bad period, due to this supposed indexing?

I tried everything I read on this subject so far and nothing works. In fact, I loved to use the apple watch and with my kind of use I could have battery for 2 days and did not lose any notification. This update killed my watch! C'mon Apple fix this sh....

I had lots of problems to start with but I am pleased to report my Watch is almost back to normal. I had one errant App which would not show and locked up installing. I eventually deleted the iPhone App version and then reinstalled it. It was Stocard and I had to reenter my Store Cards. I did one and it opened up properly at last on the Watch and then I added all the rest. So I am hoping everything is cleanly loaded now.. The Watch hasn't even gone down to 50% in a whole day which is great.. So naddod I think you will experience improvement

The same on mine. I have just some apps in the dock, but after 7 hours i passed from 100% to 15%. I had charge it. I turned off the background update. let's see if it's working.

Mine is much improved today. So far been on over 10 hours and its still got 71% left. I don't think it had anything to do with indexing as I updated a week ago. But yesterday I turned off background refresh for a few useless apps like eBay but kept all the main apple ones on. I then removed workout from the dock, not that it was active anyway. I then rebooted the watch. Instantly the rate of dropping battery improved from losing 6/7% an hour down to 2/3% an hour. It's weird because something made it start dropping more rapidly over the weekend because initially after updating last week I hadn't noticed it dropping off so fast. anyway yesterday's steps so far have improved but that's not to say whatever happened won't start again. Admittedly I don't use the watch much other than to check time, notifications or shuffle music I am listening to on my iPhone. Maybe removing workout from the dock was the trigger but I suspect not and just restarting the watch again cleared the gremlins.

I Had a complete nightmare with the watch yesterday, with the battery dropping like a stone, as was the battery on my iPhone 6.

last night my watch was probably losing 1% every 5 minutes. I tracked this until the watch completely died. I have today taken the workout app out of the dock and switched off backgr refresh for that app.

watch has been running for 9 hours and used only 31% of the battery. Similarly story on the iPhone.

IT will be interesting to see if this is shown on the log file Apple have asked me to run on the watch.