Apple Watch Battery Drain after updating to 10.5

Please follow this path,

iPhone > Watch app > My Watch tab (lower left corner of screen) > scroll down > Installed on Apple Watch > those are 3rd party apps on your Watch. I have 35 installed on my Ultra.

i don’t have any under installed apps, however I do have a long list of apps that are available after I removed while trouble shooting this night mare 🤪here’s a screen shot. BTW Jeff, I do appreciate your help. This is frustrating for me as I am a senior system administrator a living. There’s got to be a smoking gun somewhere! I wish there was a better way to isolate this. The battery health app on the watch is underwhelming.

lmckillo wrote:

I’ve tried pairing , deleting the app, forced reset , complete reset . I’ve tried it all and still the battery drains extremely fast. Frustrating as I’d get two days out of my series 4 watch

I never got 2 days out of my Series 4, which I am wearing now. I do get a full day, with an hour of either walk or cycling exercise each day.

When I upgraded to watchOS 10.5 the first 24 hours had high battery usage. I power cycled twice, and did one middle of the day recharge.

After 24 hours, my Series 4 was back to normal.

If you have 3rd party apps and complications, they could be an issue.

If you have a lot of contacts that need to be synced, that could be an issue.

Try Apple Watch iPhone App > General > Reset > Reset Sync Data

The MacObserver.com

How To Fix WatchOS 10.3 Battery Drain Issue on Apple Watch

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/fix-apple-watch-battery-drain-issue-after-watchos-10-3-update/

Also see:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250007078

For some steps that are not in the MacObserver article.

lmckillo wrote:

... I’d get two days out of my series 4 watch

You should not try to run your Series 4 for 2 days before charging. Chances are you are taking your battery dangerously low, which is a very good way to destroy a Li-Ion battery.

Li-Ion batteries DO NOT like being drained to zero, or near zero.

In an emergency, sure, put the Apple Watch in Low Power mode, and stretch it out until you can get to a charger.

But it is good practice to recharge your Series 4 every night while you are sleeping.

Thank you, Jeff Donald! My AW9 suddenly went from lasting crazy long hours to losing power rapidly. I didn't notice until it told me at 10%. By the time I started charging, it was down to 7% and wasn't increasing. After I did the forced restart and unpair-pairing, it's charging normally, and I'll keep a close "watch" over it the next 72 hours. Thanks for taking the time and energy to help people like me! Much respect to you!!!

ok since I had already done a forced restart that didn't work, I went ahead and unpaired my apple watch from the iPhone and re-paired it this morning. Now it has even less of a charge than before. I usually get up around 5:30 am, I put on my watch within 15 min. and it lasted until just before I was going to go to bed around 8:30 ish at night. Recently I have been having to put it back on the charger to do low power around 6:30 pm. Today I got up around 7 am and by 4pm, I had to put it on low power with 7% left and by 5:30pm it was dead and I had to put it on the charger. This is not working. It used to last at least 14 hours and now it lasted only 9 hours today before having 7% left. Please fix this issue. I followed your instructions and it did not work. Thank you!

You didn’t wait up to 72 hours to give your watch and iPhone the time it needs to finish its low level functions, syncing, indexing etc. The Watches don’t have near the processing power of an iPhone. It takes a little time.

I have an newish SE2 I got in February. Had wonderful battery life until recently. I unpaired and restarted and everything suggested here. Then last night i got a weird storage is full message. Investigated and had to do with photo sync. Lowered to limit of 25 and let it sync and then turned off all syncing related to photos. Rebooted and honestly seems a lot better. Results may vary.

Well here we go again. It’s getting to the stage now where I dread applewatch updates. I’m another user who is unable to keep my watch charged for more than 16 hours, thanks to the latest update.

I’ve paired and unpaired my series 5 watch, straight from when it was 100% and just doing that has drained it to 74% so will have charge it yet again later in the day. Getting very tired of having to perform additional resets etc in order to try and maintain charge, if it works at all that is. Apple really need to address this, but it seems they just aren’t.

Thanks for coming back.

No, I haven’t changed the battery, as I don’t think I’ve needed to, to be honest. I usually charge it to 100% which takes place before lunchtime every day and it lasts until the same time, the following day. I sleep with it on and use the in built sleep app, plus alarm. I always have same Infograph watch face, with various complications added, but I don’t tend to use anything else apart from occasional messages, making/taking a call, which is rare or an ECG. It maybe why it’s kept going quite well perhaps, I don’t know. By the evening, I’m usually down to about 50-60% and when I do charge later the following morning, I still have about 25% so it would go a bit longer than 24 hrs if I let it, This is why this latest update is so irritating, as with many of them lately.

Apple Support is not here, this is a public discussion forum for Apple users to connect and assist each other.

Your issue sounds like a software issue. Hardware doesn’t fix itself for 1 ½ weeks and then decide to start using more battery capacity. Either the usage pattern changed or software updated in the background.

Do you have auto install updates turned on for your Watch apps?

I've done all this and for the last week I had hope because it seemed to be better but now today, when I have actually done less, it is already down to 10% after less than 11 hours. This seems ridiculous that Apple is doing nothing to fix this issue when it is their update that caused the whole thing. I have had numerous apple watches and have never in years had an issue like this. How can we report this to Apple so they will fix it???

Jeff Donald wrote:

Apple Support is not here, this is a public discussion forum for Apple users to connect and assist each other.

Your issue sounds like a software issue. Hardware doesn’t fix itself for 1 ½ weeks and then decide to start using more battery capacity. Either the usage pattern changed or software updated in the background.

Do you have auto install updates turned on for your Watch apps?

Jeff, thanks in advanced I did already have auto updates turned off if that's what you're referring to. I didn't see any apps that have updates enabled. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place.

I just hard booted the watch, and I am un-pairing/re-paring to my phone and restoring from back up. Last time I did this it was "normal" for about 1.5 weeks as I mentioned previously. Also, the watch gets quite warm even while on the charging. For the past few days, the charge drops to 10% within 3 hours. Prior to updating to 10.5 it was at 50%-60% after a full day(6am-11:30 pm) I typically charge when I go to bed.

If there's anything else you can offer to assist, I greatly appreciate your advise

Sorry for the lengthy/wordy post.

Thanks again

I updated to 10.5 this past weekend and I charged my watch overnight like always. The next morning I put on the watch and it was dead by noon. Maybe 4 hours of life. My watch is now useless. Is there a way to revert to previous OS version. GREAT QA TESTING APPLE!!

It will take 24-48 hours for the new operating system to finish it house keeping, as well as resync things it wants from the iPhone. Power cycle the Apple Watch and your iPhone (at least once, but maybe once or twice a day until the Apple Watch battery consumption returns to normal. The MacObserver.com How To Fix WatchOS 10.3 Battery Drain Issue on Apple Watch https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/fix-apple-watch-battery-drain-issue-after-watchos-10-3-update/ Also see: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250007078 For some steps that are not in the MacObserver article. iPhone -> "Watch" app -> General -> Reset -> Reset Sync Data Again it may take a day or two for the rsync'ing of data to settle down. As a point of reference, my Apple Watch Series 4 with 90% battery health maximum capacity, was back to normal after 24 hours (watchOS 10.5). I did 1 mid-day recharge, and I power cycled my Apple Watch and iPhone twice.