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Out of the box, your Apple Watch comes loaded with settings that drain its battery.
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We'll tell you about the number one Apple Watch battery drainer,
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as well as some bad advice other YouTubers are giving out.
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But first, we're going to start with a tip that may seem counterintuitive. Just stick with us.
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First, open the Settings app, press the digital crown, and look for the Settings
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gear icon. Tap on that, and then we're going to scroll down to Battery.
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David's using the digital crown to scroll on the right.
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You can also just swipe up and down on the screen, right?
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Tap Battery, scroll down, tap Battery Health, scroll down,
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tap the switch next to Optimize Charge Limit, turn that off,
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scroll down again, then tap Turn Off.
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This is just like optimized battery charging on iPhone. Your Apple Watch learns from your
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daily habits to figure out when the best time is to charge it all the way up to 100%.
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That sounds great, but we recommend turning this off because it requires
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two other settings to be turned on. We recommend turning those off,
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and we'll tell you about them later in this video.
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First, let's talk about Low Power Mode.
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Let's tap back, upper left-hand corner of the screen,
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and look at the switch next to Low Power Mode. Should we just turn this on all the time to save
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battery life? You could, but Low Power Mode turns off a bunch of essential Apple Watch features,
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and that's how it saves battery life.
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The point of this video is to optimize your Apple Watch settings,
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so you don't have to rely on Low Power Mode.
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Let's talk about one of those settings that Low Power Mode turns off entirely,
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Background App Refresh.
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Let's tap back, upper left-hand corner of the screen,
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scroll up using the display, scrolling up on that now,
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and tap General, scroll down, and tap Background App Refresh.
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Some YouTubers are telling you to turn this switch off entirely. That is bad advice.
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It's bad advice because Background App Refresh is actually a good thing in certain circumstances.
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It allows certain apps to download new content in the background, even when you're not using them.
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Instead of turning off Background App Refresh entirely,
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scroll through your list of apps and ask yourself,
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do I want this app to be able to download new content in the background of my Apple Watch?
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Most of the time, the answer is going to be no, but for messaging apps in particular,
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it's a really good idea to leave on Background App Refresh
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to turn off Background App Refresh for an app to turn off that switch to its right.
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We know we go through these settings pretty fast. If you join our channel by tapping the
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Join button below, you can download a free PDF of everything we talk about today. What's next?
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Notifications. And unfortunately, you can't change these on your Apple Watch. We need to
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go into the Watch app on our iPhones. I'll tap on this folder, open the Watch app,
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and tap on Notifications. One individual notification isn't going to drain your
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battery much, but if you're getting notifications all day long, it could be annoying and drain your
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battery. In the Watch app on your iPhone, scroll through your list of apps and decide which apps
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you want to be able to send you. Notifications. Again, messaging apps. You want to get those
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messages right away. You want to know when you have a message right away, but for example,
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mindfulness. I hate those Apple Watch mindfulness reminders. I don't want to calm down and relax.
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Let's just tap Notifications off, and now I'm not going to get those mindfulness notifications
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anymore. Next, let's talk about display and brightness settings. Let's head back to the
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Apple Watch. Tap back, upper left-hand corner of the screen, back to the main page of Settings,
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scroll down, tap Display and Brightness. First thing to look at is the appearance slider
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on your Apple Watch. Lowering the brightness of your Apple Watch can save some battery life.
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Imagine that. Not quite as granular as the iPhone slider, is it? Only three levels. You can tap that
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sun icon on the left to make it the lowest brightness level, but it's not as good as
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iPhone, unfortunately. Next, the setting that I personally don't choose to turn off, but will
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save you battery life if you do. Always On Display. Every Apple Watch since the E5,
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minus the SE, has supported Always On Display. Always On Display gives you information at a
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glance and allows you to see the time. I think it looks great in an app like Settings,
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but when it's on the watch face, it's just way too bright for me. In our Display and Brightness
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settings, if we scroll down, we can tap on Always On. At the top of the screen, we have that Always
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On switch. If you want to turn Always On Display off entirely, tap that switch to turn it off. But
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if you like Always On Display, like I do, you don't have to keep every switch turned on. You
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can just see what you want to. If we scroll down, we have three settings. The most important one for
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me is Show Apps. We tap on that and turn off the switch at the top of the screen. This is how I
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like Always On Display when I leave it on. It just gives you a nice, plain Spartan view of the Always
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On Display. Next, let's talk about Wake Screen on Wrist Raise. It's a good feature I leave it on,
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but if you want to maximize your battery life, you might want to turn it off. Let's tap back,
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upper left-hand corner of the screen. Back to our Display and Brightness settings, scroll down and
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take a look at the switch next to Wake On Wrist Raise. Like any other watch, you probably want
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to be able to see the time when you raise your wrist, but your Apple Watch can't tell if it's
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you checking the time or taking a sip of water. You have a couple of options. You could turn off
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Wake On Wrist Raise altogether. It might be a little bit of overkill, but it will save
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battery life. Or you could come down here, tap on Wake Duration, and set it to Wake for 15 seconds.
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This reduces the amount of time your Apple Watch's display is on when it wakes up.
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On iPhone, there are a lot of cool features in the accessibility section of settings that maximize
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battery life. Unfortunately, on Apple Watch, there's only one. And that setting is Reduce
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Motion. Let's tap back to the main page of settings on our Apple Watch, scroll down,
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and then tap Accessibility, scroll down, and then tap Reduce Motion. Turn that switch on.
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How noticeable is the difference here, David? It is so not noticeable that I actually didn't
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realize I had Reduce Motion turned on for pretty much ever on my Apple Watch. You're not going to
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notice the difference. Reduce Motion is a lot more jarring on iPhone than it is on your Apple Watch.
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It's a really easy way to save some battery life. Next, we'll talk about some settings that even
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Apple admits drain battery life, sounds and haptics. And we're going to focus more on the
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haptics piece of that. I have a question. What the heck is a haptic? Haptic, little vibrations
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you feel as you're doing things on your Apple Watch. Okay, so let's tap back, upper left hand
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corner of the screen, scroll down to Sounds and Haptics, and scroll down to Haptics. You can set
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it to Prominent where your haptics are more prominent or choose Default. That'll save you
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a little bit of battery life. Next, scroll down and take a look at the switches next to Crown
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Haptics and System Haptics. So Crown Haptics, for example, when you're scrolling using the digital
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crown on your Apple Watch, you'll feel a nice little vibration. I like it. I like System Haptics
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and Crown Haptics. I'm going to leave these on, but to save battery life, you can turn both of
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these off. I'm not a fan of the haptics, but I am a fan of the people who subscribe to our YouTube
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channel by clicking that big subscribe button right below the video. Let's head back to the
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Settings app on our Apple Watch, tap back to the main page of Settings, scroll down and tap on
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App Store. Next, we need to talk about uninstalling apps you don't need on your Apple
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Watch. They're sending data back and forth with your iPhone, syncing up data and draining battery
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life. They also take up unnecessary storage space. If you run completely out of storage space on your
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Apple Watch, that can be bad for the system and for your battery, but it will also prevent you
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from doing an important tip we'll talk about later in this video. The easiest way to delete apps on
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your Apple Watch is to first put them into list view. Let's tap back upper left hand corner of
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the screen, scroll up and tap on app view and then select list view. This is one of my favorite
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Apple Watch tips overall. Even if this specific setting doesn't save you battery life, it just
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makes my life easier. Next, press the digital crown on your Apple Watch. You may need to press
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it twice to get to the list view of your apps. Scroll through a list of apps and see which ones
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you can delete. So for example, I don't need the cycle tracking app on my Apple Watch. So what I'm
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going to do, I'm going to press and hold on that app. And then I'm going to tap edit apps. Little
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X's will appear upper left hand corner of those app icons. To delete an app, tap on it, then tap
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delete app is gone. You don't have to tap on the tiny little X. Doesn't work. And to get out of
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this wiggly app mode is press the digital crown one more time. Next, we're going to make sure
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that new apps you download on your iPhone don't automatically get installed on your Apple Watch.
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Let's go to settings. We're already in our list view of apps and they're in alphabetical order,
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which makes things very easy. It's way better than the honeycomb thing. Scroll down. There is
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settings. Let's tap back upper left hand corner of the screen to the main page of settings.
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Scroll down and tap on app store and turn off this switch next to automatic downloads at the top of
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the screen. This is one of my favorite tips on iPhone too. Just because I download an app on my
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iPad doesn't mean I also want it to download on my iPhone and my Apple Watch and everything else.
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Typically, I change the settings on my Apple Watch before we do these videos just so I can
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show you turning them on or off. I was too afraid to turn on automatic downloads before this video.
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Turn it off, leave it off. It's a bad setting. Next up, mail settings. We talk a lot about how
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to optimize the mail section of the settings app on your iPhone. And we'll link to that video in
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the card above and in the description below. Fortunately, it's easier to optimize the mail
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settings on your Apple Watch. This is a setting you can't change on your Apple Watch. So go into
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the watch app on your iPhone. Scroll down and tap on mail and just make sure mirror my iPhone is
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selected. If you haven't checked out that video, click the card up above or become a channel member
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by clicking that big join button below this video. PDFs for some of our biggest settings videos
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show you exactly how to optimize your mail settings and a whole lot more on your iPhone.
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Next, let's talk about music and specifically how to add songs to your Apple Watch to maximize
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battery life. Downloading songs onto your Apple Watch uses a lot less battery life than streaming
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the songs all the time. For instance, if you listen to music every day on your Apple Watch and you're
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streaming it over the internet, it's going to use more battery because it's constantly maintaining
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that connection than if you were to download that music onto your iPhone and then transfer it to
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your Apple Watch and then play it from your Apple Watch. And over time that'll put your Apple Watch
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through more charge cycles having a bigger impact on your Apple Watch's battery health.
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So all this is to say download songs directly onto your Apple Watch. We do this in the watch
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app on our iPhone. Step back upper left hand corner of the screen. Tap on music. First thing
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to look at here is recent music. As you can see recent music is automatically downloaded to your
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Apple Watch. What we recommend doing is creating another playlist so that when you add songs or
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remove them from it those are also being added or deleted from your Apple Watch. Let's tap the
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add music button. I'm going to tap on playlists and I want to add my groovy playlist to my Apple
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Watch. I'll tap on that then tap the plus button at the top of the screen and now as you can see
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it appears under playlists and albums. Next some settings that are just generally a good idea.
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And would you believe it they live in the general section of settings. Let's tap back
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upper left hand corner of the screen to the main page of settings. Scroll up until you see general.
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Tap on general then tap on software update. It's always a good idea to keep your Apple Watch up to
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date to keep things running smoothly and protect against security vulnerabilities. It's also a
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good idea to turn your Apple Watch off maybe once a week. Keep things running smoothly. Maybe
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something just crashed in the background. Just give it a nice fresh start. To turn off your
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Apple Watch press and hold the side button until the sliders appear then tap that little power icon
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upper right hand corner of the screen and swipe the power off slider from left to right. Sometimes
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it takes 10 to 30 seconds for your Apple Watch to fully shut down. Once it has press and hold the
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side button again to turn your Apple Watch back on. Next let's talk about some of the absolute
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biggest battery drainers and they live in the privacy section of settings. Let's tap back
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upper left hand corner of the screen back to the main page of settings. Scroll down and tap on
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privacy and security then tap on location services. So if you scroll down tap on an app like app store
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we see that everything is grayed out. What's up with that? Unfortunately you have to change these
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settings on your iPhone and then they get mirrored to your Apple Watch. But fortunately for you we've
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made an entire video about the iPhone settings you need to change. Watch that next to optimize
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your iPhone and your Apple Watch at the very same time.
