Though it is a bit of a hassle to charge your watch every night, where the Pebble can go up to a week on a single charge, the battery life has been surprisingly pretty good. I’ve had my Apple Watch (42 mm Space Grey Sport) for about a week now and battery life and I can easily get 18 hours out of it on most days and a bit more if I don’t use it a lot.
I found myself in a bit of a pickle the other day when I left my charger at home and I was spending the night at a friend’s house so I decided to put together a few tips you can use to get a few extra hours of juice on my Apple Watch.
1. Turn Off Wrist Raise
With this feature on, the screen will turn on when you raise your wrist when you want to check the time. However, it will also turn on if you use your hands to gesture a lot when you are talking. Turn it off to save precious battery life and you can tap on the screen if you want to check the time.
Settings > General > Activate on Wrist Raise
2. Use Airplane Mode
If you really need to shut everything down (notifications, signal, etc.), then turn on Airplane Mode. You won’t be able to use your apps that uses a cell signal or get any alerts but you can save some battery life until when you are ready to use your Apple Watch again.
3. Turn Off Animation
With Animation turned off, your Apple Watch will reduce the GPU cycles thus saving some battery life. This is the easiest way to cut down on battery life as you will not be missing out on much.
Apple Watch app > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion
4. Change Brightness
Just like on your iPhone, turn your brightness down so it doesn’t use a lot of power to illuminate the screen, especially if you have it cranked all the way up. I have it at the lowest setting and can read the screen just fine even if it’s sunny outside.
Setting > Brightness & Text Size
5. Use Dark Screen
The Apple Watch uses an OLED screen which means black pixels doesn’t use any energy at all so the Mickey Mouse watch face will definitely drain your battery a lot quicker than the “Modular” face with limited information. You can also put your Apple Watch in grayscale mode in the Accessibility Menu but what’s the fun in that?
6. Do Not Disturb Mode
This is the exact same feature on your iPhone. You will still get notifications but your Apple Watch won’t tap or beep when it comes in. You can turn this on by going to your Settings screen in Glances and tapping on the “moon” icon.
7. Notifications Settings
A no-brainer. If you have notifications for every single app on, the Apple Watch will always be receiving data and alerting you for updates on every single app you have. However, you can control which notifications you want to go to your Apple Watch without changing it for your iPhone so you can still get Instagram updates on your phone but it won’t go to your watch.
Apple Watch app on your iPhone > Notification
8. Power Reserve Mode
Running low on battery at the end of the day and don’t have your charger with you? The Power Reserve mode will help you save the last few ounces of juice and turn your Apple Watch into, well, a watch. You won’t be able to receive any notifications or use any app. Your Apple Watch will turn this on automatically when the battery dips below 10% but you can turn it on manually by holding down the side button.
9. Power Saving Mode
With this on, your Apple Watch will disable the heart rate sensor in order to save some battery life so it won’t constantly track your heart rate.
Apple Watch App on iPhone > My Watch > Workout > Power Saving Mode