The battery life of Apple watches are better than ever. Series 1 of the Apple watch had around 18 hours battery life and needed to be charged every day/night, but now, we’re getting around double that battery life from newer generations.
Some users have reported that their Apple watch battery is draining faster than usual, though. We’re going to look at why this could be happening, and what you should do about it.
Apple watch battery drain – What’s the cause?
Now in most cases, this is something that will resolve on its own. It’s common for your Apple watch battery to drain at a much faster rate than normal after a software update, and in many cases, this is when users see problems with their battery.
So if you’ve only just updated your watchOS to a new version, wait a couple days for this issue to resolve. If you haven’t updated recently, or you’re still seeing this issue, we’re going to go through the best ways to fix it.
First, check your Apple Watch Battery Health
If you’re just noticing that your battery is getting worse over time, what you should do first is check your watches battery health,
To check your Apple Watch’s battery health, open the Watch app on your iPhone, navigate to ‘Battery Health,’ and assess its maximum capacity. A significant drop in this capacity might explain the quick battery drain.
Ideally, you want your health capacity to be at more than 80%. Any less than this, and this could be an indicator that your battery is getting older and less powerful.
Next, check third party apps
Perhaps the biggest culprit in making Apple watch batteries drain faster than they should is third party apps. Some people stick to the standard apps that come pre-installed on your device, but there are still plenty of apps to download from the app store.
These third party apps that are installed can sometimes cause an issue with draining your watch battery. It doesn’t need to be a newly installed app either, as it could have just started to happen after a recent app update.
Be sure to uninstall all of the third party apps that you’ve downloaded onto your device – you can always re-install them again later.
Then, look at background activity
Not only can singular apps be having an effect on your battery, but you also need to consider how they may run it down by using them all simultaneously.
Just like on iOS, it’s possible for you to have more than one app open at the same time. There’s nothing wrong with this, but these can stack up until you have so many apps running in the background that it runs your battery down.
So it’s important to make sure that you’re not running a lot of intensive apps at the same time – you can do this by double clicking your Digital Crown.
update your watchOS
Updating your Apple Watch to the latest version of watchOS is a straightforward process.
First, ensure that your iPhone is running the latest version of iOS. Then, place your Apple Watch on its charger and confirm that it has at least 50% battery life.
Open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap ‘My Watch,’ and then select ‘General.’ From there, tap ‘Software Update.’ If an update is available, you will see an option to download and install it.
An outdated version of the software may make your Apple watch battery drain faster than it would normally. So, make sure that it’s updated.
Finally, restart your Apple watch
If you’ve gone through the above with no success, the last thing you’ll want to do is to restart your Apple watch. This is a straightforward enough thing to do, and what it does is turn off the running software on your watch.
To force restart, hold down the side button and the digital crown simultaneously for 10 seconds. When you turn it back on, hopefully the Apple watch battery drain issue is resolved.
The truth is that it’s rare that your Apple watch battery is running down quickly because of a hardware issue if you’ve bought the watch in recent years.
If it’s secondhand, or you’ve had it for a longer period of time, there’s a chance that the battery has just run its course. Wearing your watch daily in constant use can lead to a need for servicing or repair.
Taking your watch into your local Apple store is the best idea if you can’t resolve the problem.
