The Apple Watch has a fairly decent battery life in general. While Apple claims an 18 hour battery life on watches like the Apple Watch Series 6, more often than not, it lasts well over a day on a full charge. However, if that’s not good enough for you and you need some extra hours of juice, or if you are having poor battery life on Apple Watch, there are some things you can try doing to fix the problem. Here’s how to improve battery life on Apple Watch Series 6.
There’s no one way to solve Apple Watch battery life problems because every one tends to use their watch differently. However, there are many things you can do to get a few extra hours of usage on a charge. We will be discussing all of the ways you can improve battery life on your Apple Watch, and you can use the ones you are comfortable with.
- Restart Apple Watch
- Pair Again
- Change Notification Settings
- Delete Apps
- Reduce Motion
- Turn off Wake on Wrist Raise
- Disable Always on Display
- Turn off Mobile Data for Cellular Watches
- Turn off Background App Refresh
- Reduce Screen Brightness
- Use Power Reserve Mode
- Ensure Optimised Battery Charging is On
- Use Greyscale Mode
- Use Workout Power Saving Mode
- Enable Silent Mode
1. Restart Apple Watch
If you have noticed fast battery drain on your Apple Watch 6, the first troubleshooting step to perform is a restart. This may sound silly, but a lot of times restarting devices is all that’s needed to solve problems.
2. Pair Again
If restarting didn’t fix your battery woes, you should definitely give unpairing and pairing again a shot. This is a time consuming process, but in my experience, a lot of Apple Watch issues go away after a full reset.
The Apple Watch 6 is amazing for staying up to date with incoming notifications on your iPhone. However, push notifications do use battery, and if you get a lot of notifications on a daily basis, this will definitely affect your battery life.
Most apps on the Apple Watch 6 can be quite useful. However, when you set up your Apple Watch, you might have installed every single compatible app on your watch. That’s usually fine, but if there are apps on your watch that aren’t behaving properly, they can impact watchOS 7‘s battery life management.
- Tap on any app you want to remove, and disable the toggle that says “Show on Apple Watch”.
watchOS 7’s animations and transitions give the system a smooth look and feel. However, that also means it uses more battery. If the battery life on your Apple Watch is getting really bad, you can try disabling these animations and transitions to get slightly better battery performance.
- Enable the toggle next to ‘Reduce Motion’.
Apple Watch uses its sensors to figure out when you raise your wrist to look at the screen. Then it turns on the display so you don’t have to tap on it to wake it up. This is very useful, but turning this off can result in battery life improvements since the watch will not be using those sensors to detect when it needs to wake the screen.
7. Disable Always on Display
If you’re using an Apple Watch with an always on display, turning it off can also improve your battery life. Here’s how to do that.
If you are using a cellular Apple Watch 6, you should disable mobile data on your watch when you have your iPhone around. This way, your watch won’t be constantly hunting for cellular signals and draining power.
- Open the Control Center on your Apple Watch and tap on the Mobile Data icon. If you don’t know which icon that is, check out our guide to all Apple Watch icons.
You can also turn off background app refresh to save some battery life on your watch. To do this, simply head into Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh and turn off the feature for specific apps.
You can also turn off background app refresh completely if you so desire.
If you’re like me, you probably keep the screen brightness at its maximum value. That’s good for visibility, but it does impact battery life. So if you want to get better battery life on Apple Watch, reducing screen brightness could be helpful for you.
Power reserve mode is an extreme battery saving mode built into the Apple Watch. This isn’t meant to help improve battery life as such. However, it does extend the battery life by basically converting your watch into a regular timepiece.
Power reserve mode can be enabled by following the steps below.
The Apple Watch uses a Li-ion battery. Which means it is prone to degrading over time. You should enable optimised battery charging on your Apple Watch to ensure the battery health of your Apple Watch remains as good as it can. You can also read more about the Apple Watch’s battery here.
- Scroll down and ensure the toggle for optimised battery charging is enabled.
Many people suggest, based on their experiences, that greyscale mode also helps with battery life in watchOS 7. I haven’t tested this particular thing myself, but if you’re looking for options, this is one you can try out.
For people who workout often with their Apple Watch, this option might help save battery life on watchOS. With workout power saving mode, your Apple Watch will disable the heart rate sensor on the watch to save battery.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone and go to Workout.
You can also try keeping your watch on silent mode to stop it from using the speaker. This can also help slightly in improving battery life on your Apple Watch. Doing this is really simple, here’s how.
The Apple Watch Series 6 has a blood oxygen measurement feature. While this is useful, it does use up your battery. If your Apple Watch Series 6 is dying quickly, you should try turning off the SpO2 measurement feature.
A lot of times battery drain issues arise from software bugs. As such, it’s always a good idea to keep the latest version of watchOS installed on your Apple Watch 6 to ensure that any such software problems are fixed for you.
You can check for software updates by going to Settings -> General -> Software Update.
Q. Apple watch battery life difference with Always On Display turned on and turned off?
Q. How long does Apple Watch Series 6 battery last?
The watch is connected to your iPhone over Bluetooth, so it will have some effect on your iPhone battery life. However, it’s not noticeable at all.
Q. Should you let Apple Watch die before charging?
Turning off WiFi can result in very slightly better battery life on your Apple Watch.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways you can improve the battery life of your Apple Watch. Obviously, if there is something seriously wrong with the battery on your watch, you should consider taking it in for a repair before the battery degrades to an unusable quality.
