Apple Watch Battery Draining Fast? Try This Simple Fix

blognet   Sunday, May 09, 2021   How to, Make it Useful   Comment  

The Apple Watch offers decent battery life for a smartwatch---around two days on a single charge for the GPS variants. If your Apple Watch’s battery doesn’t last as long as that, then you should try this quick tip to give it a boost.

We recently switched from an Apple Watch Series 5 to an Apple Watch SE, and experienced a massive drop in battery life with the switch. After investigating various possible fixes, we zeroed in on the culprit---Background App Refresh.

Here’s how to disable Background App Refresh for Apple Watch apps.

Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch

This feature allows apps to update important data even when you’ve not opened them. Not all apps need to refresh in the background, so you should definitely review the list and stop it for apps that don’t need this.

For example, the Workout app needs Background App Refresh to ensure that your workouts are synced seamlessly with your iPhone.

Related: Apple Watch Health and Fitness Features You Should Use

Now that you know what Background App Refresh is, follow these steps to quickly disable it for most apps:

1. On your iPhone, open the Watch app.
2. Go to General > Background App Refresh.
3. You can disable Background App Refresh for all apps by using the toggle at the top, but this is definitely not recommended as it may stop some apps from working as intended.
4. Instead, scroll down and disable it for apps such as Calculator and Camera Remote, among others.

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Since Background App Refresh is enabled for all apps by default, this is worth checking every time you install a new app on your Apple Watch.

Boost the Battery Life on Your Apple Watch

After disabling this option for most apps, the battery life on our Apple Watch SE improved dramatically. Our watch went from running out of charge in around a day to having enough battery to last almost two days.

It’s quite likely that this is a bug that Apple could fix in the future, but until then, this method should help you improve your Apple Watch’s battery life. In case this doesn’t work, you could also try simple fixes such as reducing screen brightness to improve your Apple Watch’s battery life.