The IT Nerd

A few days ago, I noticed that the battery life on my Apple Watch took a significant nosedive. Instead of lasting about two days between charges, it would be requiring a recharge at about 9PM at night. Given that I wake up at 6AM, that wasn’t good. Clearly there was a problem, but I needed to figure out if it was software or hardware as if if it is the latter, I would have to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store. Here’s how I went about isolating the problem:

1. Reboot the Apple Watch: It sounds simple, and it is. Sometimes a simple reboot will work. So what I did was I rebooted by pressing and holding the side button and crown at the same time until the screen went blank and the white Apple logo appeared. I did it first thing in the morning so I knew that I was starting out with a fully charged Apple Watch. Then every couple of hours I would note how much battery life I had left by swiping up from the bottom to see control center. I also noted how much battery life I had left at the end of the day. In my case, by the end I would usually have something between 60% and 70% battery life depending on what I was doing that day. For example, if I was out for a ride on my bike, I would be closer to the 60% mark in terms of battery life. In my case, rebooting didn’t work as I was still noticing excessive draining of the battery. Thus, on to step 2.
2. Un-pair the Apple Watch from your iPhone and re-pair: What this process does is basically reset your Apple Watch from a software perspective. The reason why you would want to do this is that maybe there’s some piece of software that is draining the battery excessively. Thus by doing this, you get the option of starting out with a virgin Apple Watch from a software perspective. Then you can add back all your Apple Watch apps until you find the one that is causing your problem. Or you can simply add them all back and see if things stabilize. I would recommend that you try the former for best results. Though I will admit that it is time consuming. Apple has a document for un-pairing your Apple Watch from your iPhone here. Now you can pair your Apple Watch using these instructions from Apple and I would recommend setting it up as a new watch rather than using a backup so that you avoid the possibility that you are reintroducing a problem that was part of a backup. In my case, doing this process seems to have worked. At least so far. I will continue to monitor this to ensure that it stays “fixed.” Warning: You’ll need around an hour to do this and if you have any credit or debit cards added to the Apple Watch to use with Apple Pay, you’ll need to add those back as well.
3. Make an appointment with the Genius Bar: Let’s pretend that neither of the above solved my issue. At this point I have eliminated most of the possible software causes and I am left with a hardware issue. That means a trip to the Genius Bar. When you go, you need to make sure that you tell the Genius that you’ve done the above and be prepared to explain it in detail. That way your time at the Genius Bar is minimized and they can either repair or more likely replace the Apple Watch in short order (assuming it is under warranty or AppleCare).

Do you have any other tips for solving battery drain problems with the Apple Watch? If so, please leave a comment below and share your tips.

This entry was posted on June 21, 2017 at 8:54 am and is filed under Tips with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.