Apple watch battery draining quickly after iOS 26.0.2 Update.

capitan.pis wrote:

when did you perform the update to watches 26? Consider what was written bellow, it can take 2 or 3 months to the watch to "get back" to the previous performance. In my case, it was reduce to a charge every 12 hours and now it is back to 26-27 hours after 2 years and 9 months of use

Not 2 or 3 months. It's 2 or 3 days. If something's still wrong after a week or so, the problem is not the update.

Unless your watch is an Ultra, it was never advertised to have much more than about 18 hours of battery life.

Please read the complete thread, it took me 2, 3 months to get it back to normal, and I was not the only one. Read below post by Stéphane298 four days ago.

My watch is an 8 series watch and when it was new it lasted about 30 hours between recharge though I recharged every 24 hours. Within the usage, it started obviously losing capacity and now it is around 26 27 hours which anyway I don't need as I recharge every 24 hours.

I have no idea what is advertised or not, I am telling you how it works for me. Sure, there are many features the watch allows you to control in order to save battery life, such as the background of the watch and notifications handle and Apps working in the background. I made sure I take all what I need from the watch, and regarding things I don't need nor use, I set the settings so the consumption will be as less as possible.

Having the same issue after upgrading to 26.0.2. Pre-update, I would charge my AW8 to 95% around 06:00 everyday, and by 21:00 I would still have 30-40% battery life remaining. Now I am at 20% around 16:00. And that last 20% burns down real fast. Also, the rate of battery drain appears to increase each day. I tried the hard restart with no results. I have not tried a restore from backup.

This is a problem for now. I bought an extended Apple Care. I checked the battery health level at 81%, then after the upgrade, it went UP to 84%. No kidding. Others explained that it is not an absolute read of battery capacity, and algorithms can change it.

What it means financially to me is that I have to charge a watch every 6 hours, and there is no hope of battery or watch replacement. Three years of use.

The Battery Health on your watch will be calculated from time to time automatically, especially after watchOS updates. So it might as well drop again after the next calculation or after using the watch for a couple of days.

The Series 5 of a family member is stuck at 80%, and Apple will only replace the battery if it reaches at least 79% or if the battery is defective.

when did you perform the update to watches 26? Consider what was written bellow, it can take 2 or 3 months to the watch to "get back" to the previous performance. In my case, it was reduce to a charge every 12 hours and now it is back to 26-27 hours after 2 years and 9 months of use

Hopefully 26.1 works for other people, it did not work for me and it required the unpair and restore from backup on both my watches. Best of luck not having to go through the extra hassles!

My Apple Watch Ultra (AWU2) used to have a battery life of approximately 2.5 days between charges before upgrading to watchOS 26.0.2. Its battery life has since decreased significantly, now lasting barely one day.

Also, with this update, the fitness app is not working properly. Before, every minute was getting captured, and now even if I walk for 5 minutes with the app switched on, it is not taking the minutes at all. Seriously disappointed with the new updates and with the Battery backup.

After 26.0.2 update, my apple watch 9 loses sync with my iPhone and its battery also runs out very quickly.

The only thing that helps a little with the synchronization problem is turning the watch off and on. I also tried resetting the watch several times and restoring from a backup. It doesn't help. Hopefully Apple will release a fix update soon. because I can't continue like this.

[Edited by Moderator]

I charge the watch before I go to sleep. I use it during the night (11:30 p.m. to 6:50 a.m.). The battery percentage has changed significantly since the last update. Before iOS 26.0.2, I would wake up with 87% battery, but now it's only 76%. I have a Series 7 with 82% battery life.

Im having the same issue. I charged it before I went to bed at 9:30..Twelve hours later it's dead. Ive done nothing except sleep. Before it would keep the charge up until the evening. so maybe I could go twenty hours on that one charge. Now it's barely making twelve.

Update: after 2 weeks, the battery life has recovered to being better than it has been in at least a year.

There must indeed have been some background processes going on.

But they took long and were certainly intense