Apple Watch Series 1 to Series 7 have one thing unchanged- The battery life. It is a famous figure of 18 hours after continuous usage. But there can be different rational reasons or sometimes defect in the Watch that makes the battery die quickly. So if your Apple Watch is giving up on you before that, there can be several reasons for that. Let us check them out.
Software issue related to Pairing
Sometimes, an error or bug during the pairing process between your Apple Watch and iPhone will cause the battery to die quickly. You can check and try to resolve this issue by unpairing your Apple Watch with your iPhone and pairing it again from the start. To unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone –
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone
- Tap on the “My Watch” option at the bottom of the screen
- Select your Watch and then select the “i” option
- Now, Tap “unpair Apple Watch” to complete the unpairing.
Once the unpairing is done, pair it again like when you first bought the Watch and paired it with the iPhone. Check if this prolongs the battery life of your Apple Watch.
Your Apple Watch Display might be hurting the battery.
Displays on all of the Apple devices drain battery quicker. Apple Watch is not an exception. The longer the display is on, the quicker the battery will drain. The number of times you tap on the Apple Watch will determine how long the battery lasts. For 18 hours of battery life, 90 taps are considered. You can decrease the “Wake Screen” time to improve the battery life of your Apple Watch. Here is how to do it.
- Go to the Watch app on your iPhone and select the “ My Watch” tab
- Now, Tap on the “General” option
- Next, tap “Wake Screen.”
- Now select “ Wake for 15 seconds” if it is not toggled on already
Apple Watch also comes with a “Wake Screen on Wrist Raise” feature, which is a convenient thing and a battery killer. You can turn it off to make the battery last longer. Instead, you can allow it to turn on when you touch the screen or the digital crown. Here is how you can turn off the “Wake Screen on Wrist Raise” feature if it is not turned off already.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone
- Tap on the “My Watch” tab and select “General.”
- After that, Tap on “Wake Screen”
- Turn off the “Wake Screen on Wrist Raise” option given at the top of the menu.
“Always-On Display” was first introduced in Apple Watch Series 5, and Apple users went crazy over this cool feature. But, in hindsight, it is a culprit when it comes to quick battery drainage. But, you can turn it off to save battery life.
- Press the digital crown on your Apple Watch to see all the apps
- Now, go to the Settings menu
- Here, find “Display and Brightness.”
- Tap on the “Always on” option
- You can turn off this feature to improve the battery life of your Apple Watch
The final trick you can try to prolong the Apple Watch’s battery life is to decrease the brightness of the Apple Watch screen.
- Press the digital crown to see all the apps on your Apple Watch
- Now, scroll down and tap on the settings menu.
- Tap on the “Display and brightness” option
- Now, tap the smaller sun icon to reduce the screen brightness.
Too many features enabled can be a burden to the battery.
Push Notification feature –
The push notifications feature allows your Apple Watch to receive notifications and alerts from the iPhone from apps and messages. Allowing too many apps to send notifications to your Apple Watch can hurt the battery life of the Apple Watch.
To customize the push notifications so that only the most important notifications get sent to the Apple Watch, you can follow these steps –
- Go to the Watch app on your iPhone
- Select the “Notifications” option under the “My Watch” Tab
- Here, you will see all the apps on your iPhone that can send notification alerts to your Apple Watch.
- You can toggle off all the apps and allow only the most important ones like text messages and emails. To do that, tap on any app.
- Next, select the ‘Custom” option
- Now, you can enable the “Notifications Off” for that particular App from waking up your Apple Watch. This will further keep the battery life healthy.
Background App Refresh feature –
The “Background App Refresh” option makes sure that all the apps on your Apple Watch are updated with the latest data, even while running in the background. While this is great to keep the apps functioning nicely, it can be a zombie feature for the battery. You can enable it for only the most essential apps and disable it for the others.
To disable it for most of the apps while keeping it on for the important ones, you can follow the following step –
- Go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
- Now, under the “My Watch” tab, tap “General.”
- Next, choose the “Background App Refresh” option.
- Here, you can choose to disable this feature entirely or selectively turn it off for some of the apps.
Enable Reduce Motion feature
This would take out the smoothness of the Apple WatchOS, so it is not recommended unless you want your battery to last a bit longer for a particular scenario. Enabling Reduce Motion will turn off all the animations and transition effects throughout the User Interface when you switch between menus. To turn it off –
- Go to the Watch app on your iPhone.
- Under the ‘My Watch’ section, tap on the “General” option.
- Next, select the “Accessibility” option.
- Now, Tap on “ Reduce Motion” and enable it.
The WatchOS needs an update.
Bugs or glitches in the current WatchOS version might be the reason for poor battery performance. Since the developers at Apple are constantly trying to reduce bugs and improve the features, including the battery life, updating to a newer version of the OS might resolve the issue.
If your Apple Watch is running on WatchOS 6 or higher, you can upgrade the OS from the Watch itself. For the lower versions, you will need the iPhone.
To update the WatchOS directly from the Apple Watch –
- Make sure that the Apple Watch is connected to the WiFi
- Now, open the Settings menu on your Apple Watch
- Scroll down and Tap on “Software Update”
- The “install” option will be active if an OS update is available
- Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the process.
To update the WatchOS using an iPhone –
- Open the “Watch” app on your iPhone.
- Under the “My Watch” section, tap on “General.”
- Next, select the “Software Update” option.
- If there is an update available for the OS, you will be able to download it from there to the Apple Watch and install it.
Apple Support – the final way!
If none of the tricks above fixes the problem of the battery dying quickly on your Apple Watch, there might be an issue with the hardware in the Apple Watch. You can contact Apple customer care or take your device to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. They will figure out the issue and let you know what to do to solve the problem.
