watchOS 11 is hurting batttery life for some Apple Watch owners

watchOS 11, launched earlier in September, is causing serious drops in battery life for some Apple Watch owners, according to social media posts and Pocket-lint’s own testing. In Pocket-lint tests, an Apple Watch Series 6 that would previously end the day with 10 to 20% or more of battery life using watchOS 10 is now frequently ending the day with less than 10% — sometimes less than 5%, even after switching on Low Power Mode at 10%. The drain occurs regardless of whether a workout took place.

Threads on Apple’s support forums suggest that similar issues are affecting a variety of models, such as the SE, Series 8, and even the top-end Ultra 2. Drain is so bad that an Ultra may last less than a day, despite multi-day battery life being one of the product’s key selling points. Similar complaints are appearing on Reddit.

There’s no definite explanation as to what’s causing the problem, and Apple hasn’t issued a statement on the matter. However, some forum posters claim that they’ve seen battery life return by disabling Live Activities in watchOS 11’s Smart Stack. These are meant to provide live notifications for things like Uber rides, Instacart orders, and sports scores, much like an equivalent feature on iPhones, but it could be that they’re generating too much processor and/or wireless activity.

How do I disable Live Activities in watchOS?

You’ve got multiple options available to you

If you want to disable Live Activities completely, follow these steps:

1. Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
2. From the My Watch tab, select Smart Stack.
3. Flip the Allow Live Activities toggle.

There’s some nuance here, though. As a half-measure, you can alternately block Live Activities from auto-launching when your wrist is down, or turn them off on a per-app basis — say if you don’t need up-to-the-second Instagram or Shazam alerts. All of these options are easy to find in the Smart Stack menu.

It’s not yet clear if the Apple Watch Series 10 handles Live Activities better. It’s the only Watch equipped with Apple’s new S10 processor, which could hypothetically be more efficient at some tasks than the S9 used in the Ultra 2 and Series 9. It’s certainly better than the slower processors found in older models.

The Series 6 is the oldest hardware still compatible with watchOS 11 — it originally launched in September 2020. Its S6 chip laid the groundwork for several Watch generations, but it doesn’t support more recent watchOS features like Double Tap or offline Siri commands.