Apple Watch battery drain to be fixed in update shortly

Apple says that an issue with watchOS 1001 that caused some Apple Watch batteries to drain excessively quickly, is to be fixed in an update that is coming soon.

It's normal for any device to see unusually quick battery drain after an update, as it works in the background on tasks such as building an index of data. That usually lasts only a couple of days, but an unknown number of Apple Watch users have been seeing a much greater battery drain, which has not improved.

The drain is far from universal, but sufficient numbers of users have experienced it that Apple has now informed Apple Authorized Service Providers that it is working on the issue. As first spotted by MacRumors, the providers were informed via memo which acknowledges the issue and reports the fix is coming, but without any further detail.

Consequently, it's not clear how many users have been affected, or whether the battery drain is associated with all models of Apple Watch. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it's been spotted on all current models, plus older ones going back to Apple Watch Series 5.

The watchOS 10.1 update that has caused the issue is compatible with Watches back to Apple Watch Series 4.

This is not the first time that Apple has had to make a similar update to fix a battery drain on the Apple Watch. In 2020, Apple put out watchOS 7 around a month after the original watchOS 7, for the same reason.

6 Comments

bab2 2 comments · 9 Years

About 1 year ago

thanks for this.

I was thinking it was time to replace my Apple Watch Series 5,

which no longer last through the day. Hope this fixes it and soon.

goofy1958 166 comments · 13 Years

I'm having this issue on my series 9. It isn't consistent though. Only went through 60% all day yesterday, but 40% in just 3 hours this morning.

anappleaday3 1 comment · 1 Year

Since the latest update I've been researching battery replacement for my Series 4. Also, it's suddenly laggy, which was never the case before. I am determined to hold out until the next redesign for an upgrade, so hopefully this fix does actually help me make it through the day.

lolliver 497 comments · 10 Years

anappleaday3 said:

Since the latest update I've been researching battery replacement for my Series 4. Also, it's suddenly laggy, which was never the case before. I am determined to hold out until the next redesign for an upgrade, so hopefully this fix does actually help me make it through the day.

I have a series 4 also and was hoping to wait until next years release to upgrade. My watch was still performing fairly well until this last upgrade. Then I started to have battery drain issues. It also started getting fairly warm while charging. Then about a week ago it got really hot while charging. It then rebooted and has been stuck in a boot loop ever since. I’ve tried several times to reset it but can’t get it to work.

Hopefully this next update will resolve your issues. Series 4 is still worth holding on to if they fix the software issues.

ralphbu 23 comments · 13 Years

On my Series 7 watch, I finally solved it by turning off Background app refresh on all apple watch apps. So i think it has something to do with Background app refresh.