Watch 6 running watchOS 10 has battery life issue

After a few days, power cycle your Apple Watch and iPhone.

After a major operating system upgrade, the operating system is doing a bunch of housekeeping in the background.

It should finish after awhile, and a power cycle will generally put everything back to normal.

And that’s exactly what I experienced after updating my series 4 watch to watchOS 10. The first couple of days battery life was a problem. Things have settled down and battery life is back to normal. Happens almost every time. Patience is a virtue.

Thank you for this insight. I too have a series 4 Apple Watch and have also seen the battery life issue. In my case, I have also had other issues. Such as the Watch's Weather app not showing the weather nor the Weather complications. Or Wi-Fi being on yet not connected to a network. It's been a real whack-a-mole situation over here. Called Apple Support numerous times since I installed WatchOS 10.0 and now 10.0.1. But, I am confident all this stuff will work itself out. I haven't given the watch enough time to resolve it's issues on its own. Wiped it way too many times to count! But, now, armed with your insight I'll just leave the watch alone for a while ad see if it does indeed resolve its problems on its own. Or, at the very least, some of them such as the BIGGIE ISSUE -- the rapidly dying battery! Thanks again!

I re-discovered Apple about 1.5 years ago, and so far practicing new watch and phone every year. They bring the costs of the new devices down by nearly 50%, have new optimized hardware, and bring a renewed sense of fun. On the other hand, Ikrupp's suggestion regarding patience is solid. More, I sense there are bigger things happening in the background, or it's a weird part of getting hooked into Apple stuff. It's painful when things do not operate as we expect, but when things are resolved it seems like a new device.

Those are my thoughts, but good luck.

Well concerning series 4 watches notice that they are now five generations old. My series 4 battery health is down to 81% and battery replacement is recommended to be considered at 80%. Batteries don't last forever and I have kept my AppleCarte+ warranty up to date for $3.99/mo. Worth it for a $600 watch even if ti old.

The issue is excessive battery usage regardless of the age of the battery. I get that the battery isn’t brand new but the performance after the update is markedly worse. So I should have spent $240 in AppleCare for an $80 battery?

There's nothing you can do about it and there's no rolling back to the previous watchOS. As I already pointed out after a few days the issue resolved itself. Reports of battery life issues come after every major release, be it macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS. They almost always resolve themselves.

Same here with my Series 6. I'm hoping the OS will settle down after another day or two so I can get back to my normal battery life which was at closer to 48 hrs. I called support and they said the same thing to me but mostly tried to get me to buy a new battery which they say costs $99 but online says $79 when I get to the payment screen (total scam charging nearly a quarter the price of the phone for a battery replacement).

Today I used a watch face with no complications. It’s been on for 13 hours and I’m down to 40%. However, what’s the point of the watch if you can’t use its features? Any hour activity runs the battery down 20%. There’s definitely excessive power being used by complications. I’ve seen it lose 5% just opening an app like settings. Something isn’t right.

I have series 4 watch and noticed the same issues. The weather app is a battery killer. I deleted it from my Smart Stack.

Some users have reported issues with complications using excessive power. You might experiment by disabling some to see if that changes things.