Insane Battery Life Tweak - Apple Watch SE

[MrTSolar]

So I can get a solid two days from my Watch SE GPS, however some setting changes I made may have just bumped that to nearly a week. So far, I’m 7.5 hours since full charge and at 90% charge with probably one of the craziest days in a long time for number of incoming messages. My normal usage had Activity tracking and ambient noise monitoring on, but not heart rate. When I first got the Watch, I left Activity tracking off. Good news is that Activity tracking on its own doesn’t use much energy, but bad news is that turning that off doesn’t help extend runtime.

However, things changed with turning off ambient noise monitoring and Wrist detection. Wrist detection is what locks your Watch when you take it off. Turning this off means that the Watch stays unlocked when you take it off, but it will lock when it starts charging (since you’d be hard-pressed to charge a Watch while wearing it). Turning off Wrist Detection completely turns off the sensors on the back of the Watch (taking out Activity tracking with it), and can save considerable battery life.

Wrist detection is in Settings under Passcode on the Watch.

 

[jz0309]

So I can get a solid two days from my Watch SE GPS, however some setting changes I made may have just bumped that to nearly a week. So far, I’m 7.5 hours since full charge and at 90% charge with probably one of the craziest days in a long time for number of incoming messages. My normal usage had Activity tracking and ambient noise monitoring on, but not heart rate. When I first got the Watch, I left Activity tracking off. Good news is that Activity tracking on its own doesn’t use much energy, but bad news is that turning that off doesn’t help extend runtime.

However, things changed with turning off ambient noise monitoring and Wrist detection. Wrist detection is what locks your Watch when you take it off. Turning this off means that the Watch stays unlocked when you take it off, but it will lock when it starts charging (since you’d be hard-pressed to charge a Watch while wearing it). Turning off Wrist Detection completely turns off the sensors on the back of the Watch (taking out Activity tracking with it), and can save considerable battery life.

Wrist detection is in Settings under Passcode on the Watch.

I hope you’re not using Apple Pay on the watch.
And, turning every sensor off - why do you have an AW?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Turning off wrist detection is not a good idea, in my opinion.

If you didn't want to have to charge your Apple Watch every day - two days, maybe you should have looked into getting a Fitbit.

 

[MrTSolar]

I got it for just about everything BUT health tracking. As for Apple Pay, it requires a passcode before enabling with WD off.

 

[MrTSolar]

Turning off wrist detection is not a good idea, in my opinion.

If you didn't want to have to charge your Apple Watch every day - two days, maybe you should have looked into getting a Fitbit.

If I have to take the Watch off when I’m not home, I just swipe up from Control Center and tap the lock button. I figure not too many people are going to knock me out and steal my watch just to message people I know (about the only thing it can do away from the phone). Besides, Wrist Detection can be rather easily fooled into not locking while the Watch literally changes hands, not to mention someone could just grab my phone, hold it in front of my face, and then walk away and do considerably more damage to my identity.

As for battery charging, it’s no problem to charge it every morning. I just wanted to share a trick that people can use if they need their watch to last longer. As for Fitbit, no way. The Watch was a stretch for me.

 

[MrTSolar]

Okay, so it didn’t extend quite as far as I expected, but I still saw a decent improvement. After 48 hours, it still has 25% charge left. In that 48 hours, I probably got a record number of notifications, easily double or triple my usual, the Watch stayed connected to my phone and Wi-Fi, and my day to day usage didn’t change. Before, the watch would be below 15% at the 40-hour mark.