If you have an Apple Watch on your wrist, you naturally want it to last as long as possible on a single battery charge. With these 7 practical tips you can extend the battery life of your watch in an instant.
Extend Apple Watch battery life
Your Apple Watch is packed with features and capabilities. This is of course great fun, but it all costs electricity. In addition, not all functions are equally practical. With these tips you can get the most out of the battery life of your Apple Watch.
1. Screen brightness
The new Apple Watch Series 4 has a screen that extends to the edges. This is of course a nice sight, but it is bad for the battery life of your watch: the display consumes electricity.
The most important tip to last longer with your Apple Watch battery is therefore to lower the screen brightness. To do this, go to the settings screen and choose ‘Brightness & Text size’. Rotate the Digital Crown to make the screen less bright.
2. Prevent the screen from turning on
A handy feature of the Apple Watch is that the screen turns on automatically as soon as you lift your wrist. However, this does cost energy, especially if you do not intend to use the watch at all. Therefore, disable this feature by going to ‘Settings> General> Activate screen’.
In the same menu you can also specify how long the screen should remain lit. The choice is between 15 or 70 seconds, where the first option is of course better for the battery.
3. Choose your watch face consciously
You can brighten up the home screen of your Apple Watch with countless watch faces, but a simple variant is best for your battery life. Therefore, go for a calm design.
You switch clock faces by swiping left or right when the clock is on the screen. Subsequently, different designs are shown where it is better for the battery life to choose a simple one with little information.
4. Reduce the number of notifications
With every notification, the screen of your Apple Watch lights up and you get a tap, which of course requires power. It is therefore better to limit the number of reports for battery life.
To do this, go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and choose ‘Notifications’. Here you can see which apps are allowed to send notifications to your watch. Check this list and remove unnecessary permissions.
5. Airplane mode
If you do not want to be disturbed, it is wise to switch on your Apple Watch or airplane mode or Do Not Disturb. In airplane mode, the Wi-Fi connection is lost and with Do Not Disturb you will no longer be disturbed by notifications.
To do this, open the control panel by swiping up from the bottom of your watch face. Then tap the airplane icon. You turn on Do Not Disturb by tapping the moon sign.
You can also switch on Theater mode in the same control panel. This mutes the sound of your Apple Watch and the screen no longer turns on with a wrist movement. This of course saves battery. To do this, press the theater icon with the two masks.
6. Energy saving mode
Did the above tips not help and is your Apple Watch almost empty without a charger nearby? Then the Savings mode is your last rescue. As soon as you turn this on, your watch efficiently uses the last bit of power so that you can still get through the day.
You turn on the Power Save mode by first opening the Control Panel (swipe up from the bottom of the screen). Tap the battery percentage and swipe the green button to the right. Then confirm with ‘Continue’. Are you stuck? Then read our more extensive article about turning on power saving mode on your Apple Watch.
7. Other tips
Siri listens in by default. You activate the smart assistant by saying “Hey Siri”, but you can also choose to silence the assistant and thus extend the battery life. To do this, go to the settings menu on your watch, choose ‘General’ and then ‘Siri’. Slide the switch on ‘Hey Siri’ so that the box is gray.
In addition, it is wise to ensure that your Apple Watch is always running the latest version of watchOS. To check, go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap General, then tap Software Updates. We will now check whether a new version is available for you.
Looking for more tricks? Then check the Tips overview!