Apple Watch battery draining fast after watchOS 11 Update

I have updated my watch with this fix, but still find my battery is draining much sooner than it did before. I have to charge it every 16 hours, whereas before I installed OS 11 I could go almost 24 hours on a charge. Is there another fix coming?

So I have been working with Apple directly about the battery draining issue along with a backup issue. The backup issue is that the watches have not been backing up since the beginning of iOS 17. Appears that when you go to settings>iphone storage> and look for the watch app, your backup are showing old ones and not updated backups. This has been reported to an engineer at Apple now. However still leaves the battery draining issue. I finally unpaired 4 of my Apple Watches series 6,7,10, and ultra. All have returned to normal battery cycles. However, the olds of you getting a recent backup may be low per everyone reading this. After unpairing and setting up the watch again backups and battery cycles return to normal. Not for sure if the issue has to do with multiple watches connected to a device which I have 5 which is the max per device. Either way this a bad bug!!! Not for sure if this will ever get resolved. After reading several bugs, the battery draining issue has been present since July and 1st of August in the betas and never got fixed.

in conclusion my recommendation for everyone have issues with the battery is to unpair the (I) set it up as a new watch, but the restore from backup should work too. Hope this helps everyone!!! Good Day Mate!!!

This update is awful. I always got 30 hours minimum, sometimes 40. Now I’m lucky to get 14…

is there any word from apple on a bug fix. To me this is a bug …. Going this far backwards !!! I dread to think it might get worse with their AI update.

Mine lasts for 6 hours. I already tried a watch and phone reset multiple times. In addition, the battery health dropped from 100 to 83% during this time. This means that I will need to replace my battery once it reaches 80% if Apple doesn’t address this issue.

Today, my watch also wouldn’t stop beeping, asking me to power it off, contact emergency services (SOS) or cancel. I would cancel or power it off, and it just keeps alerting me with the same prompt.

I did a phone reset and it happened again during the reset. I had to keep trying to reset it in-between the erroneous alerts. I have yet to see if this reset fixed anything.

With the last update, now my watch battery lasts another hour (7 hours instead of 6). Also, my watch no longer gets severely hot like it has been whenever I charge it since the OS 11 update.

Since the 11 update, I also cannot change the brightness on my watch. I move the slider and it has no effect. My display also periodically twitches, so I have trouble changing any alarms.

I turned off most of my notifications. (Already tried all resets.)

I have also found that my watch has been draining very quickly since the update. The watch is only a year old and it doesn’t even make it through the day. At first I thought it was because I hadn’t put it on the charger right and it didn’t charge fully. However, that isn’t the case. Today when I put it on it was 100% charged. I looked at it 45 minutes later and it was 76% charged. All I had done was feed the dogs, make coffee, and sat down to watch the news. Nothing strenuous. The only thing I can relate this fast drain to is the update. Before the update the battery stayed charged all day and some.

Apple Watch Ultra drained x 20% in 2 hours and now at 50% after 3 hours. I typically get 2 days from a charge. At this rate my watch will be on the charger more than on my wrist. Come on Apple. What have you done. Someone needs to address this with urgency.

Maylandy, yours was a helpful comment. Unfortunately I've reached my "likes" limit (what???) In any case, this whole thread is borderline scary. I have a 6; my wife a 5. I've been suggesting she upgrade to a 10, but now I wonder. The 5 will not update beyond ios 10.x, so that one has no battery problem even though its older than mine.

Hi guys,

Same here. My Watch 7 CE is draining super fast after upgrading to iOS 18 (even 18.1). Wrist detection is also completely off and keeps locking every time so I had to disable it.

Of course month after warranty.... Sweet.

Restarts / reattaching did not solve the issue. Disabling Live activities or picture sync neither.

What now?

Leave it finish its updates which seem to progress long after they look like they’re finished. Mine took the whole day and ran my ultra to 5% in 6 hours. Back to normal today - I hope! Not sure why Apple don’t declare this as part of their upgrade process.

It looks like you need to keep your 10.nn if possible, until the final 11.nn bugs are out. It does appear that my series 6 is slightly better with 11.1 than it was with 11.01. My wife's series 5--which actually is displaying an end-of-life warning under battery health--is lasting longer than my series 6. Hers shows capacity down to 77% from new; mine is 93% from new. The series 5 apparently is not compatible with the iOS 11.nn versions.

Timing is everything. I had almost convinced her to trade up to a series 10.

Two days ago I installed the latest watchOS 11.1 update and the battery life on my Ultra 2 remained stable.

Unpairing and re-pairing, water watchOS 11.0.1 restored the battery life to normal and the latest watchOS update did not change that. 45hours without charging, 44% battery life left, average use 1.2% per hour, 60min recorded workouts.

Live Activities are still disabled.

I have an Apple Watch series 8 that is only a year and a half old. Ever since I performed the update to 11.1, the battery is draining so fast that I wind up having to plug it in halfway through the day. This is UNACCEPTABLE!! I wear my watch to bed - I don't listen to music on it. Nor do I use the apps. Only messaging and the walking app. It is not a cellular model. Battery drain at 1-1/2 years old should not be an issue. I contacted support..."maybe you're using too many apps or maybe you're not charging it correctly. BS!!! Do better Apple. We should not be required to buy a new watch at $900+ every year or two. I'll go back to a Fitbit before I do that. Ridiculous.

I had the same problem UNTIL my apple watch started to crash and a bit later, didn’t turn on anymore. The weirdest thing is that when I charge it, the paired iPhone still shows the battery level, but the Apple Watch is unresponsive, even when I try to force a hard reset (pushing crown+side button). Any advice?

Wife S5; me S6 (wife got me one because she liked hers...ordinarily, I have the older version of any tech in the house.) Anyway, the S5 won't update beyond iOS 10.nn, and she has no problem with it running down rapidly. My S6 suffered the 11.0 and 11.01 rapid battery drain. It seems to be doing better a couple days after 11.1 was installed. I shut down and restarted a couple times. I leave it on a charger overnight, and it charges to 80%, as that's the new system, I'm told, to maximize battery life. Yesterday, it was still at 44% at 11pm, so it's doing much better. Fingers crossed.