Apple designed Apple Watch with a battery life expectancy of 18 hours per day, and from my own experience, I can definitely attest that it usually far exceeds that number. But of course, it all depends on your usage. Depending on what you do with it, you might see better or worse battery life. Below are some simple tips to extend Apple Watch battery life. Some of them are obvious, some of them are less obvious. Unless you want to be an extreme power saver, it would be silly to implement all these tips at once. My advice is to look at them, and pick and choose which one would allow you to enjoy your Apple Watch to the fullest extent while not compromising on the best features the device has to offer. Apple Watch battery life tips Keep in mind the goal here is not to disable as many features as possible. The goal is to be aware of the different ways you can save battery depending on your Apple Watch usage. Adjust screen brightness The OLED display of Apple Watch provides great black levels with minimal power management, but it still needs power, and the brighter your screen is, the more it will require. One obvious way to remedy this is to lower the brightness of the screen. Note that there are only three levels of brightness. Use a darker watch face Black pixels require much less energy than other colors on OLED displays, which probably explains why there is so much black across the Apple Watch user interface. One simple way to save battery life is to use watch faces with as much black as possible. The more black you have, the more battery you can retain. While the impact is probably minimal, it can add up quickly if you have several of these features on your watch face. Lower or mute sounds By default, every time you receive a notification, the watch will provide haptic feedback and make a sound. Reduce haptic feedback Just like sounds can take a toll on your Apple Watch battery, the vibration from the Taptic Engine, although minimal, can also contribute to lower battery life at the end of the day. Be conservative with notifications Apple Watch is a great way to stay in touch, but it can become a distraction if you have too many notifications set up to be pushed from your iPhone to your wrist. Even worse, these distractions can have a negative impact on your battery. Not only this will improve your battery life, but it will also keep you more focused. Turn Do Not Disturb on in order to save a little battery by not being pinged with incoming notifications. Not only it will prevent the Taptic Engine to use battery when providing haptic feedback, but you will also save battery life by not raising your wrist and waking the screen to look at notifications. Turn off Hey Siri Hey Siri is a great feature that feels like it was made for Apple Watch, but it is also one that is constantly listening to you when the screen is on, one mAh at a time. Doing so will seriously amputate the usefulness of your watch, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Turn off wrist raise Out of the box, your Apple Watch is configured to wake the display when you raise your wrist in front of you, and from my experience, it works fairly well. This is because the watch thought you did. If you want to be more conservative with the frequency the display wakes up, just opt in to wake it manually. To wake the display, you will now have to either tap on it, or press one of the two buttons. Just like you should do for apps, try to curate the amount of Glances you have set up on your iPhone. Use Power Saving Mode during workouts During workouts, you can turn on Power Saving Mode to disable the heart rate sensor, which is one of the most power-demanding features on your Apple Watch. The downside is that calorie burn calculation may not be as accurate when the heart rate sensor is off. Stop sending your heart beat Just like measuring your heart beat during workouts is a power hungry feature, sending your heart beat to your friends can have an impact on your battery level at the end of the day. The fix here is simple: just refrain from sending your heart beat to friends. Turn off automatic app downloads By default, every time you download an app that has an Apple Watch component, this app will automatically be installed on your watch. This can be convenient, but it can also slightly diminish your battery without your actual consent. Reduce motion In the same way that iOS 7 introduced various animations, Watch OS is packed with subtle motions that aim at improving the visual experience of the software. The problem is all these little animations add up and can take a toll on your battery life in the long run. This setting also has other side effects, such as resizing all your Home screen icons. Reduce transparency Just like various motions were added in iOS 7 and made their way to Watch OS, transparency is also a big part of the overall design language used on Apple watch. And just like motion can decrease your battery, transparency, to a smaller extend, will as well. There is a handful of games available for Apple Watch, and these things will just suck the life out of your battery in less time than it takes for you to answer a Trivia Crack question. You know, the Trivia Crack emergency. Take it easy on calls Still in the obvious category, it should be noted that according to Apple, talk time aka phone calls is the best way to deplete your Apple Watch battery. Try to keep you inner Dick Tracy in check, and unless it is absolutely necessary, try placing phone calls directly from your iPhone. This is its primary purpose after all. Take it easy on music streaming After phone calls, streaming music via Bluetooth to a wireless headset is the worst thing you can do to your battery, according to Apple. If you have your iPhone handy, simply stream the music over Bluetooth from the phone to the headset. Get in Power Reserve mode When everything else fails, and maybe more importantly if your watch must go through the day to tell the time, just turn Power Reserve mode on. This will shut down every feature of your Apple Watch but it will keep telling the time, which I guess is its basic function anyway. On your watch clock screen, swipe up to reveal the Glances, and look for the power one, then tap on Power Reserve. You can also press and hold the side button and drag the Power Reserve slider to the right. To get out of Power Reserve mode, press and hold the side button to restart your watch. To restart, simply press and hold the side button to power off, then press and hold again to boot it up. Do you have tips on how to save battery on Apple Watch? Please make sure to share them with us. For more , make sure to check out our growing.
