Apple Watch battery tips that actually work

The Apple Watch is arguably the best smartwatch available on the market today. However, the Apple Watch battery life just isn’t the greatest as you will need to charge it every couple of days.

Today, we’re taking a look at a few different ways for you to squeeze a bit more juice out of your Watch. These range from using Power Reserve to changing watch faces and more.

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Make use of Battery Stats

If you have noticed that your Apple Watch battery is draining quicker than normal, you’ll need to investigate. Similarly to the iPhone, the Watch app features a settings panel to view all of this information.

1. Open the Watch app
2. Select the My Watch tab
3. Tap General
4. Scroll down and select Usage
5. Review stats under Time since last full charge, including usage AND standby as well as power reserve, if applicable

From this same screen, you also see the amount of storage available on your watch and battery stats. 

Check your Apple Watch’s Battery Health

You can leverage a battery health feature if your Apple Watch uses watchOS 7 and above. Sadly, this is unavailable for watchOS 6 and below and Apple Watch Series original through Series 2.

1. On your Apple Watch, tap to open Settings 
2. Scroll down and choose Battery
3. Review the graph and continue to scroll down for additional information for things like Last Charged to 100%
4. Tap Battery Health
5. Scroll down and check your current Maximum Capacity
   1. If your Apple Watch’s maximum capacity is less than 80 percent, consider getting Apple’s battery service (included at no additional charge with AppleCare+ and for $79 if outside of AppleCare+) 
6. Scroll down and toggle on Optimized Battery Charging
   1. This setting reduces the rate of battery decay by learning your charging routines and maximizing when it charges past 80%
7. For optimizing to work, you need to also toggle on the following settings:
   1. Privacy > Location Services > Location Services
   2. Privacy > Location Services > System Services > System Customization
   3. Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations > Significant Locations

Turn off Background App Refresh

Just like your iPhone, apps can refresh in the background on your watch. 

Try turning this feature entirely off or keep on only those apps that you believe are necessary for you to keep refreshing.

• Open the Watch app on your paired iPhone
• Go to My Watch > General 
• Tap Background App Refresh
• Toggle it off
  • Or toggle the apps you don’t want to refresh off

Turn on Low Power mode

With watchOS 9 and above, there’s an awesome power savings mode for Apple Watch called low power mode!

Low Power Mode extends the watch’s battery life when you don’t have time to charge it or don’t have a charger handy.

Low Power Mode turns off the always-on display and limits background sensor readings and your Apple Watch’s cellular and Wi-Fi connections. It turns off these features: Background heart rate measurements, Heart Rate Notifications, Irregular Rhythm Notifications, and Blood oxygen measurements. 

Additionally, when not in range of your iPhone, your Apple Watch tries to get notifications approximately once an hour.

Once you charge the watch to 80% or more, Low Power Mode automatically switches off.

To turn on low power mode, swipe up to Control Center, tap on the battery percentage, or open Settings > Battery.

Power Reserve mode

Before you start tinkering with different ways to save battery life, you must get acclimated to the battery stats. This is a menu you see when you swipe up from the bottom of your watch.

When tapping the battery percentage in the top right-hand corner, there is more information to find. From here, you see the battery percentage remaining and the ability to enable Power Reserve.

When Power Reserve is enabled, all of the extra features of your watch are disabled. Your standard watch face will be replaced by a plain-jane one which only shows the time. If you want to disable this, press and hold the side button on your Apple Watch.

Learn more about Power Reserve mode in this article. Is your Apple Watch stuck on only showing the time in Power Reserve mode? Let’s fix it!

Find the best watch face

Over the years, Apple has added more watch faces to the Apple Watch. The problem with these is that there can be many things going on.

This causes your watch to work harder with the included OLED display. However, there are some “darker,” and more basic watch faces you can choose from.

Changing these watch faces is pretty straightforward, and you can set everything up from the Watch app on your phone. After the watch face has been added, swipe to the left on your wrist until the new face appears.

Disable Wrist Raise

If you want to look at your watch to check the time or notifications, the “Wrist Raise” feature is important. This makes your watch turn on whenever you lift your wrist from its normal position.

The problem here is that you may accidentally turn the display on. There is a feature in the settings of both the Watch app and your Apple Watch to disable this.

From the Watch app, follow these steps:

1. Open the Watch app
2. Tap My Watch
3. Select General > Wake Screen
4. Toggle Wake Screen on Wrist Raise

If you want to disable this from the watch, follow these steps:

1. Press the crown on your Watch
2. Scroll and find Settings
3. Tap General
4. Select Wake Screen
5. Toggle Wake Screen on Wrist Raise

After Wrist Raise has been disabled, your watch will turn on only if you tap the screen.

Take advantage of Silent Mode

Chances are that you receive a slew of notifications on your Apple Watch. Constantly receiving and interacting with these can cause wear and tear on your battery life.

Apple has included a Silent Mode, which makes it possible to mute all of these. To enable this mode, follow these steps:

1. Open the Watch app
2. Select Sounds & Haptics
3. Toggle Silent Mode

There is no need to worry about alarms or timers being muted when Silent Mode is enabled. However, this will only work if your watch is on the charger.

Turn down the notifications

Keeping with the trend of keeping your wrist quiet, you’ll want to check out the notification settings. Some apps may send notifications that don’t necessarily need to be included.

Apple has allowed users to have more control over what notifications arrive. Here are the steps you need to take to fine-tune notifications:

1. Open the Watch app
2. Tap Notifications
3. Go through and adjust the ability for apps to send notifications

Save some power while working out

One of the primary focuses of the Apple Watch is its fitness tracking capabilities. If you are a bit of a gym rat, you will want your watch constantly tracking everything you are doing.

This can put a rather big strain on the battery, leaving you very little juice left after the gym. Apple recognized this and has created a Power Saving Mode that works only while working out.

To enable this, follow these steps:

1. Open Watch app
2. Scroll down and select Workout
3. Toggle Power Saving Mode

The catch with using the Power Saving Mode is that the calorie burn output won’t be accurate.

Adjust the Brightness

The Apple Watch features one of the most beautiful OLED display panels on a smartwatch. We have already covered how to use a simpler watch face to save battery life.

But if you want to use one with many different complications, you’ll need to go a different route. It’s unlikely that you need your Apple Watch to be as bright as possible all of the time.

 

Here are the steps you need to take to turn down the brightness:

1. Press the crown on your Watch
2. Scroll and find Settings
3. Tap Brightness & Text Size
4. Change the level with the brightness buttons

This can come in handy if you need to squeeze some extra juice before the end of the day.

Heart Rate

Your Apple Watch keeps an eye on your heart rate throughout the day or during a workout. This is an excellent inclusion for those with irregularities, but it is a significant drain on the battery.

You’ll want to enable Power Saving Mode to disable the heart rate sensor. Here are the steps:

1. Open Watch app
2. Scroll down and select Workout
3. Toggle Power Saving Mode

You may want to invest in a Bluetooth chest strap if you work out for extended periods. This will still communicate the results to your Apple Watch but won’t use nearly as much battery life.

Do you need ‘Hey Siri’?

Being able to summon Siri from your wrist is an absolute game-changer. You don’t need to have your phone around and can still get answers to questions and more.

However, if you are someone that doesn’t use Siri, then you don’t need to have the ability to summon Siri. Here are the steps to disable ‘Hey Siri’ on your Watch:

1. Press the crown on your Watch
2. Scroll and find Settings
3. Select General
4. Scroll down and tap Siri
5. Toggle Hey Siri

After this has been disabled, there is no worry about being able to summon Siri. You can still put Siri to work by long-pressing on the Apple Watch’s crown.

Disable extra ‘Motion’

Hidden in the settings of the Watch app are some accessibility features. One such feature is “Motion,” which uses motion and automatic resizing of the user interface.

Apple has included the ability to reduce the amount of motion on your Apple Watch. Here are the steps:

1. Open Watch app
2. Tap Accessibility
3. Select Reduce Motion
4. Toggle Reduce Motion to the ‘On’ position

Unpair your watch and then re-pair it

If your Apple Watch still drains its battery too quickly, unpairing your watch from your iPhone and re-pairing and connecting to your backup often helps.

Check out this post to learn the unpairing process: Unpair Apple Watch with or without your iPhone or Watch.

Sometimes, you must set up your Apple Watch as new rather than connect to your backup. But try restoring your backup first. If problems persist, then unpair again and set it up as new.

Did we miss anything?

The Apple Watch is one of the most in-depth and useful smartwatches on the market today. There are likely other ways for you to help save some battery life.

Sound off in the comments below, and let us know if there are any Apple Watch battery-saving tips and tricks that we may have missed!