The Apple Watch is a great addition to your Apple ecosystem, as it helps you with health, fitness and productivity. A drawback it has compared to other smartwatches, however, is its relatively short battery life.
With moderate use, it can last up to 18 hours between full charges. If you use your watch for pretty much all its functions and apps, you should keep tabs on how its battery is doing.
Apple Watch Battery Life
According to BuyBackBoss, you get 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and 60-minute work with music playback from the Apple Watch via Bluetooth. That's all over the span of its 18-hour battery life.
Add in the usage of other features, heavy apps, and some unoptimized settings and your battery life can vary day to day.
To check your battery level, swipe up on your Apple Watch to access the Control Center. You can find the battery percentage there.
If you want to keep an eye out on your battery even when you're just checking the time, Mashable suggested adding a battery complication.
Some of Apple's watch faces can be edited to include certain controls or figures. Simply long-press on the specific watch face you want to use. If it allows you to add complications, swipe left and you can add the battery widget under "controls."
When it's charging on its wireless charger, you can check just how far along it's doing so by tapping the lightning bolt icon. You can also go to Settings>Battery to view the level of battery life as well as a graph showing you its charging history.
Your iPhone can also track your watch's battery life. Aside from checking on the Apple Watch app, you can also add a widget if your phone is currently using iOS 14.
You can add a widget to your home screen by long-pressing anywhere on the screen until the apps start jiggling and the "+" icon appears in the upper right-hand corner. Search "batteries" in the Search Bar, and the widget selections should appear. Select the type of widget layout you want, tap "Add Widget," move it around your home screen to where you want it to be, and click "Done" on the upper left-hand corner of your screen.
Apple Watch Battery Dying Fast? 4 Ways to Save It!
Your Apple Watch's battery usage can vary day to day depending on your activity and how heavy you use it. Luckily there are a few ways to control the variability of the battery life in everyday use.
Aside from giving your Apple Watch a good reboot with the old "turn it off then on again" technique (done by holding down both the Digital Crown and the Side Button at the same time until the Apple logo appears on the screen), here are four other ways you can save your Apple Watch from battery drain:
4. Adjust Your Settings
Checking your Settings is good practice. Not only do you find out what your Apple Watch's features and capabilities are, but you can also customize how it works for you.
Here are a few settings you can adjust to help you preserve battery life:
Power Saving Mode: Apple said by turning on Power Saving Mode, you disable the heart rate sensor and it won't record calories as accurately. If you're working out in a gym, most cardio machines have these metrics built-in anyway, so it won't be much of a big deal.
To turn on Power Saving Mode, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone. Go to My Watch > Workout and toggle on Power Saving Mode.
Adjust Your Display: Your watch turning on its display often, especially unintentionally, can drain a bit of battery life. This is most often the case when you move your hands a lot, and every time you move your wrist, the display pops up.
You can stop the display from doing that by going to Settings on the Apple Watch, selecting General > Wake Screen, and turning Wake Screen on Wrist Raise off. That way, you can control when you turn on the display by tapping the screen or pressing the Digital Crown.
Disable WiFi and Cellular Radios: Connectivity and searching for connectivity can drain your Apple Watch's battery. If you need to have your Watch connected to your iPhone, keep both devices' Bluetooth settings on, as Apple said that's the more power-efficient way of communication between the devices. If not, just toggle it off on both devices.
Turn Off Unnecessary Notifications: If you really don't need to know about specific notifications from an app, you can go ahead and turn those off as they just take more battery life every time they pop something up on your screen.
Go to the Apple Watch app on your phone and turn off notifications for anything you don't really need, only whittling it down to the notifications you care about, BuyBackBoss said.
3. Optimize Your Battery Charging
Apple's watchOS 7 programs your Apple Watch to learn from your daily charging habits to improve the lifespan of your battery with a feature called Optimized Battery Charging. The feature is designed to reduce the wear on your battery and improve its lifespan by reducing the time your Apple Watch spends fully charged.
This feature only activates in certain locations, however. Optimized Charging only activates in locations where you spend the most time, like your home or your place of work.
Go to the Settings app on your Apple Watch to turn on these location settings to help your watch identify situations where it shouldn't be used.
Privacy > Location Services > Location Services
Privacy > Location Services > System Services > System Customization
Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations > Significant Locations
Note that Apple does not receive location features for this feature.
2. Background App Refresh
Background App Refresh serves to make sure your device always has current data. How this can drain battery life is due to the fact that it constantly needs to send and receive data from your other connected devices.
To turn this feature off, open the Watch app on your iPhone. and head toMy Watch > General > Background App Refresh. From here, you can either disable the feature throughout all apps or just select specific apps, leaving the important ones to get the needed data.
1. Reset and Restoring
If your battery still seems to be draining, what you can do is restore it back to its factory defaults. This will erase all your settings and content, including apps, music, and workout histories. BuyBackBoss suggested backing up everything to iCloud beforehand.
To do the factory reset, head to Settings > General > Reset and select "Erase All Content and Settings."
Apple Watch Battery Drain From Chemical Age
Lithium-ion batteries, the batteries used for Apple Watches and a lot of smart devices, are consumable components that become less effective as they chemically age, Apple said.
As batteries chemically age, the amount of charge they can hold diminishes and so that means shorter battery use on a seemingly full charge.
Nothing can stop lithium-ion batteries from chemically aging, but Apple does its best to combat this with new updates to their watchOS to optimize battery life to keep your devices' battery stronger for longer.
Wearable tech, and tech in general, can degrade over time, but with proper care and device settings optimization, you can enjoy your devices for a good stretch of time.
