How To Extend Your Apple Watch’s Battery Life

You can save battery on your Apple Watch in a few different ways. A full charge normally lasts about 18 hours, but depending on how you use your device, it may be much less than that. Here are five of the best ways to maximise your Apple Watch’s battery juice.

There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing that low battery alert when you swore you only charged it a few hours ago, but it’s pretty much a given if you use your device a lot.

Thankfully, there are some things you can do to increase the amount of time your battery lasts. Although these methods aren’t guaranteed to drastically improve your battery life, they are several of the best options you have to try and save battery.

Use a darker watch face

Since black pixels require less energy than other colours on OLED screens, it makes sense that using a darker watch face would help preserve your Apple Watch’s battery.

To change your watch face, open the Watch app on your iPhone and under the Face Gallery tab, choose your desired watch face by tapping the Add option.

Then, tap the My Watch option on the menu across the bottom of your screen and, under My Faces, choose your desired face.

Adjust your screen brightness

Just as your screen brightness can affect battery life on your iPhone, the same is true of the Apple Watch.

Lower your screen brightness by tapping the Settings app directly on your watch or selecting Brightness & Text Size under the My Watch tab in the Watch app.

Use the slider to adjust the brightness of your Apple Watch’s screen, moving it to the left to reduce it.

Reduce the number of notifications you receive

Constantly having your Apple Watch’s screen light up with new notifications can create a real drain on battery life. You can limit this by reducing the number of notifications you receive.

To do this, open the Watch app on your iPhone and choose the Notifications option under My Watch. From there, you can individually decrease or disable notifications for each app by tapping on them one by one.

Disable the wrist raise feature

Apple Watch’s wrist raise feature turns on the screen every time you lift your wrist, showing you the time and any other notifications that may have popped up. It can be convenient, sure, but it can also drain your battery.

To turn this off, navigate to the Settings app on either your watch or on the Watch app on your iPhone. Go to Settings, then General, then Wake Screen.

Here, you can disable the Wake Screen on Wrist Raise and Wake Screen on Crown Up features by toggling the green button to the right of each option.

Turn on Power Reserve mode

While this isn’t necessarily the most convenient option for saving your watch’s battery, it’s certainly the most effective. Turning on Power Reserve mode will disable any and all notifications and alerts on the device as well as shutting down every other feature.

Basically, it will become a glorified regular watch, only displaying the time. To enable this, swipe up on your watch’s home screen to reveal the Glances. Tap the power percentage button and then, under the percentage of battery remaining, slide the Power Reserve button to the right to enable it.