Apple Watch - worse battery life on iOS 26?

Hardware
1

Noticing these past couple days my Apple Watch battery draining faster than usual, has even died wearing it a couple times already, is it just me

2

I had this for a bit after the initial OS upgrade. But restarting the watch and the paired phone a few days after the update solved it.

1 Like
3

I’ve not seen this. AW 9.

1 Like
4

I have not experienced this, Ultra 2

1 Like
5

Not noticed on my Apple Watch Series 7 with watchOS 26, but definitely noticed on my iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 26…

2 Likes
6

Thanks will try pairing

7

Was at 93 an hour ago, now it’s at 76, will reset

8

I also have a U2, and am wondering why my battery life has dropped dramatically. Still on the beta version(s) of watchOS, so perhaps it will improve.

1 Like
9

My Ultra 2 was at 93% yesterday morning and is at 70% now. It drains so slowly that I forget to check until it’s out of juice :blush:

Katie

1 Like
10

My wife has a series 9 and has been experiencing less than expected battery life. I have the 11 and it seems to be OK. Her battery drain is worse when we stay closer to home and she does more than one workout. It was better before the 26.0.2 update.

1 Like
11

Got same problem, AW SE2 & iPhone 15 Pro Max, both OS26. 1-hour outdoor walk could drain 40-50% of the watch battery. And definitely it happens only during workouts.
Force-restart of the watch and iPhone didn’t help.
Yesterday I tried to turn off workout mirroring to the iPhone screen. Maybe it helped - didn’t get any significant battery drain, but I was doing only gym workout. So it might be the problem with workout mirroring or maybe something with GPS (Apple Watch don’t use it while doing indoor activities). I’ll check outdoors today.

2 Likes
12

AW8 here, not lasting as long either. Noticeably worse of late but that could also be it’s just degraded more/age.

It just about lasts a day, including 1 hour at the gym and a walk. I have to charge it in a specific window and am more aware of the battery than ever before.

1 Like
13

I was just realizing yesterday that my Series 10 battery isn’t lasting as long. I chalked it up to it being a year old now, but it is coincidental that it started to happen after I updated to the new watchOS and iOS 26.

1 Like
14

I had this after the upgrade to 26, my watch was needing a recharge early afternoon.
Removed and reset the watch, set it up again and I’m back to getting 24 hours usage again.

2 Likes
15

Update to my last post, after a few days: in my case, it was definitely some kind of bug in workout mirroring. When I turned that off, battery life is back to normal, also during outdoor activities.

16

Update: restarted, then turned bluetooth off and left it charging overnight, that seemed to work,
got 24-ish hours of battery, definitely improved

2 Likes