Does watchOS 11 improve Apple Watch battery life? The solution is here

The launch of Apple’s watchOS 11 a few weeks ago brought a lot of exciting new features to the Apple Watch, including a translation app, sleep apnea detection, and even new watch faces.

Unfortunately, it also introduced a bug that chews through the watch’s battery like a bear in an apple orchard. Good news: Apple is rolling out a fix for this annoying bug in watchOS 11.0.1.

How much battery consumption was there? On Reddit, user u/Brilliant_Command206 reported that his watch was 100% charged when the watchOS 11 installation finished just before lunch. When they went to bed that night, they discovered that the watch had drained 72% of its battery in just over 10 hours. Another user reported that his phone died in just six hours. Some fans continued to experience battery draining at seemingly random times.

This isn’t entirely unexpected though. Last year, watchOS 10 caused similar problems.

Fortunately, Apple noticed this situation and released an update. In addition to the battery drain issue, this update also fixes another bug that caused the Music app to crash and randomly restart Apple Watch. Full patch notes can be found on the Apple Developer Blog. They are worth reading.

The update should be live now, so check your Settings app to make sure you haven’t missed it. This update won’t radically change how the Apple Watch works; in fact, there are almost no new features to speak of. What’s that does to do is patch many of the bugs that are driving Apple Watch users crazy.

If your Apple Watch isn’t lasting as long as you think it should, you can take steps to extend its battery life.