Your Apple Watch is a little marvel on your wrist. Particularly if you use an iPhone, this smartwatch is a useful and practical addition. The test of the Apple Watch Series 6 also showed that the battery life is unfortunately not very long. This is reason enough to think about how you can use the energy storage for longer with the help of a few tricks. We will give you ten tips on how you can get more power out of your Apple Watch. With these tips and tricks, you won’t even have to make any major changes to your usage habits.
Table of Contents
1- Display Brightness Adjustment
At the same point, there are three levels where you can adjust the brightness of the Apple Watch’s OLED screen. The default setting is the medium brightness level. Switching to the lowest brightness level can improve your Apple Watch’s battery life at least a little; while still allowing you to read well in most situations.
2- Installing Updates
And last but not least: install the software updates provided by Apple on a regular basis. Not only will you always be up to date with new features for the watch, but you will also benefit from important optimizations that Apple developers implement in the watchOS firmware with regard to battery life.
3- Switch off Always-on Display
You can save the most energy by not using the always-on display on the Apple Watch. The energy storage is drained quite quickly when the screen is permanently on. And that is even though you only look at the display sporadically. In the Watch app on your iPhone, you can find the option to deactivate the always-on display under the menu item “Display and brightness”. You simply turn off the corresponding slider.
4- Making Use of Battery-Saving Watch Faces
The great advantage of a smartwatch is that you can change the design in no time at all. If you don’t like a watch face anymore, it can be changed in just a few moments, and your watch can be given a completely new look. However, it is more likely that the more colorful the watch face design is, the more it will put a correspondingly higher strain on the battery. The general rule is: the more minimalistic (and black) your chosen watch face is, the less it will drain your watch battery. Especially animated watch faces suck up a lot of energy and should be avoided in favor of longer battery life.
5- Limiting Notifications
A further great added value of any smartwatch is mirroring notifications directly to the wrist from the smartphone. Whether it’s WhatsApp Facebook Messenger, as well as breaking news from your favorite messaging app, you can get notified of anything that’s important to you. Do you really have to read every breaking news directly on the Apple Watch? Is it not enough to just take note of certain things on your smartphone at a later time? Finally, your Apple Watch vibrates every time (!) a message arrives on your wrist.
And, yes, this also drains the battery. That’s why it’s best to restrict the notifications appropriately. You can do this via the Watch app under “Notifications” menu item. You can do this for every single app that is installed on the Apple Watch. Especially note the sometimes very long list in the second half of the display, in which you can select and deselect the notifications mirrored by the iPhone.
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6- Turn Off the Display by Lifting the Arm
As an Apple Watch wearer, you have probably noticed that your watch sometimes turns on even when it doesn’t have to. For example, whenever you make a careless hand gesture. Or every time you turn your wrist in the direction of your field of vision. But each time the display of the Apple Watch is activated, it nibbles away at your energy storage. Deactivating the display activation when you raise your arm can help. This can be done in the “Watch” app on the iPhone via the menu items “General” > “Activate display” > deactivate the slider for “By raising the arm”.
7- Using Flight Mode
One more tip for longer battery life: set it to flight mode whenever you don’t need your Apple Watch. For example, at night when you are asleep or during a long car ride. It would be best if you were not distracted while driving anyway. All power-consuming data connections are interrupted if you set your watch to flight mode. You won’t receive any notifications anymore. However, you can set the flight mode settings always to keep a Wi-Fi connection active. This, of course, also eats away at the battery.
8- Turn Off Background Update
Many Apple Watch users don’t know: Much like on a smartphone, the apps installed on the Apple smartwatch are constantly kept up to date via a background update. For example, there is the weather app. Therefore, a data connection is active for numerous apps at (in)regular intervals, EVEN if you do not actively use the installed apps.
This can have a negative impact on the battery life the more apps you have installed. But: for each app installed on the Apple Watch, you can switch off the background update via the Watch app, or you can deactivate it completely if necessary. (“General” > “Background Update”).
9- Switching off WiFi / Mobile Communications
Talking about WLAN: a permanently activated Wi-Fi connection can also drain your Apple Watch battery. The same is true for the cellular interface of the LTE version of the Apple Watch. You can disable the Wi-Fi and LTE connection via the quick start menu. To do so, simply swipe upwards from the bottom of the display on your Apple Watch and deselect the (two active) data connection(s).
10- Switch off Pulse Meter
One more important point where you can neatly intervene in the conservation of your Apple Watch battery is found in the deactivation of the heart rate monitor. You can easily turn off the continuous heart rate measurement in the Watch app under “Privacy” > “Heart Rate”. However, then the manual heart rate measurement will also no longer work. And also, the ECG function is no longer available.
Increase Apple Watch Battery Life: Conclusion
Not satisfied with all that? Then just activate the power reserve. However, then the Apple Watch only displays the time, and all other functions are deactivated. You can stop the power reserve by holding down the side button for a long time. Then the Apple Watch restarts, and you can access the full range of functions again after the reboot.
Note: While this guide is based on watchOS 8.3, each update Apple distributes for its Apple Watch firmware may change some of the items described above. However, we try to keep the tips and tricks up to date at all times. If, against all expectations, you should still discover a discrepancy, do not hesitate to send us suitable feedback.
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