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Apple Watch Battery Draining

My apple watch series 4 has started draining extremely quickly since maybe early January. I will now go to sleep wearing the watch which I just charged to 100% and when I wake up it's in the low teens. I use it as my alarm clock and I've actually had it die on me in the middle of the night which causes issues of course. Is there a solution? This is really frustrating. I've unpaired and repaired the watch and that usually solves the problem for a day or two (will be over 90% battery when I wake up if full when I go to sleep) but then it reverts to the same issue. Apple your products are priced at far too high of a premium to have issues like this unresolved.

Apple Watch

Posted on Mar 5, 2020 6:29 AM

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Posted on Mar 21, 2020 4:16 PM

Ok I figured out the problem. It has something to do with a process called TrustedPeersHelper which I think manages the various devices on your account. I noticed this was running a lot of CPU time on my mac so I was researching if others had the problem and found this link (https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/dmbuj5/macos_catalina_trustedpeershelper_always_running/)


I'll summarize since it's not totally easy to follow but basically there are three database files located in "~/Library/Keychains" (you can go to the "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder" and paste that in it will take you there. The files are called "com.apple.security.keychain-defaultContext.TrustedPeersHelper" with the extension .db .db-shm and .db-wal .. it seems for some reason these got corrupted and became quite large (in my case over 15mb each). If you delete them they will be recreated immediately (I'm assuming from scratch without whatever the error was). I then restarted all my devices and my watch is back to normal battery life!


If you want the shortcut to delete the files you can open the Terminal window and paste in:


rm -f ~/Library/Keychains/*/com.apple.security.keychain-defaultContext.TrustedPeersHelper.{db,db-shm,db-wal}


then hit enter and restart everything and you should be ready. The original article where I found this said they had to log into their apple account again but that wasn't my experience.


I also found that this has improved my iPhone battery performance (though it wasn't terrible) but it does seem better now. Also my MacBook seems to be working with less CPU churn.


Hope this helps others.

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5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 21, 2020 4:16 PM in response to mkizz

Ok I figured out the problem. It has something to do with a process called TrustedPeersHelper which I think manages the various devices on your account. I noticed this was running a lot of CPU time on my mac so I was researching if others had the problem and found this link (https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/dmbuj5/macos_catalina_trustedpeershelper_always_running/)


I'll summarize since it's not totally easy to follow but basically there are three database files located in "~/Library/Keychains" (you can go to the "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder" and paste that in it will take you there. The files are called "com.apple.security.keychain-defaultContext.TrustedPeersHelper" with the extension .db .db-shm and .db-wal .. it seems for some reason these got corrupted and became quite large (in my case over 15mb each). If you delete them they will be recreated immediately (I'm assuming from scratch without whatever the error was). I then restarted all my devices and my watch is back to normal battery life!


If you want the shortcut to delete the files you can open the Terminal window and paste in:


rm -f ~/Library/Keychains/*/com.apple.security.keychain-defaultContext.TrustedPeersHelper.{db,db-shm,db-wal}


then hit enter and restart everything and you should be ready. The original article where I found this said they had to log into their apple account again but that wasn't my experience.


I also found that this has improved my iPhone battery performance (though it wasn't terrible) but it does seem better now. Also my MacBook seems to be working with less CPU churn.


Hope this helps others.

Mar 5, 2020 7:03 PM in response to mkizz

Hey mkizz,


Thanks for using Apple Support Communities! I understand you're concerned with the battery life of your Apple Watch. I definitely know how important it is to get the most from your Apple Watch battery, and I'm happy to help.


I recommend checking out the tips in the resource below to help improve battery life.


Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan


You may also consider upgrading the iOS/watchOS of your Apple Watch and the paired iPhone. You can see how to that using the resources below.


Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Update your Apple Watch


Thanks again, and have a great day!

Mar 5, 2020 7:29 PM in response to CarlAVII

Hi -- thanks for the reply but this wasn't really helpful. There's some issue I think with the last few updates as I never had this issue before and my settings and apps have not changed. Additionally as I said in my original post if I unpair and repair (from a backup) the device it works perfectly again for a day or two but then reverts to draining quickly.

Mar 7, 2020 5:39 AM in response to mkizz

I agree. In the past week, I've had to charge twice a day minimally. I've turned off all apps that use power on a regular basis, updated software, addressed complications, stopped using it for workouts, and I still can't get more than 9-10 hours. My watch is only 14 months old. I too am of the opinion that this watch is far too expensive to have such issues unresolved.

Mar 11, 2020 9:49 AM in response to mkizz

Update on this. I finally bit the bullet and tried unpairing and repairing as a new device and specifically made the point not to install any third party apps. For the first day or so it was perfect (as was the case when I repaired from a backup) -- woke up the next morning with something like 95% charge left. Was hoping this would have solved the issue but it's been degrading since then. It's not quite as bad as before but seems to be getting a little worse every day. Now when I go to sleep with 100% I'll wake with ~50%. I charged my battery up to 100% again after waking up and by midday it's at 43%. The "good news" is that it seems to be degrading slower than before but it's still going in that direction so it's a small consolation price. It's clearly software as if it were hardware it wouldn't go back to normal for a little while and it's also now clearly Apple's software as I have no 3rd party apps installed any more. @Apple I would recommend getting your act together as I've purchased quite a large number of your products over the years and I was even thinking about upgrading my laptop and apple watch to the 5 (even though I have the 4) but I've been convinced not to waste my money since I don't feel like paying for new gadgets that only half work ....

Apple Watch Battery Draining

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