Apple Watches have never had great battery life. Even though Apple claims a “full day battery”, they still quote only 18 hours of battery life on the newly launched Apple Watch Series 8. Now, while the watch actually lasts much longer than the claimed 18 hours, it’s still not the best in terms of battery life and leaves a lot to be desired. And that’s where the new Low Power Mode comes in. So the next time you’re on a trip and can’t charge your watch, don’t forget to use the Apple Watch low power mode.
With the release of watchOS 9, Apple has made a couple of changes to the battery saver mode in Apple Watch. In older versions of watchOS, Power Reserve was the only way to ensure that your Apple Watch could survive for longer than a few days without being recharged. However, with watchOS 9, you can use the new low power mode to extend your battery life.
How to Enable Low Power Mode
Use Low Power Mode when Battery Goes Below 10%How to Disable Low Power ModeWhat Does Low Power Mode Do?
Disabled FeaturesFeatures that Might be AffectedLow Power Mode (watchOS 9) vs Power Reserve (watchOS 8)
Use Low Power Mode when Battery Goes Below 10%
Disabled FeaturesFeatures that Might be Affected
How to Enable Low Power Mode
If your Apple Watch is running out of battery, you can quickly enable low power mode. There are two ways to do this.
Open the control center on your watch by swiping up from the bottom of the home screen. Here, tap on the battery percentage.
Scroll down and enable the toggle next to ‘Low Power Mode’.
Tap on ‘Turn On’. Alternatively, you can tap on’ Turn On For’ and then choose a duration for which you want to enable low power mode. You can turn it on for 1 day, 2 days, or 3 days.
Using Settings
Scroll down and enable the toggle for ‘Low Power Mode’.
Tap on ‘Turn On’. Alternatively, you can tap on’ Turn On For’ and then choose a duration for which you want to enable low power mode.
Note: When low power mode is enabled, you will see a yellow circle icon on Apple Watch.
When your Apple Watch is running low on battery (10% charge remaining), it will prompt you to either charge your Apple Watch or put it on low power mode. If you enable low power mode via this prompt, it will automatically turn off once your Apple Watch has been charged up to 80%.
In case you don’t want to use low power mode any longer, you can easily disable it as well. Once again, there are two ways you can do this.
Open the control center and tap on the battery percentage (it should be yellow, if the low power mode is on).
Here, disable the toggle next to ‘Low Power Mode’.
via Settings
That’s all; low power mode is now disabled on your Apple Watch and it will continue working as usual.
That pretty much sums up the tutorial part, but if you’re curious and wondering how the low power mode saves and extends your Apple Watch’s battery life, let’s take a quick look at what happens behind the scenes.
Basically, low power mode disables a bunch of features that aren’t essential to the functioning of the Apple Watch. As such, it turns off features that are low priority, yet high on battery usage:
What’s more, if your iPhone isn’t near your Apple Watch, low power mode goes even further and disables two more things on your watch:
- Incoming calls and notificationsWiFi and cellular connections
Note: Apple says that incoming call notifications and other notifications will still be checked periodically by the Apple Watch in low power mode.
If you are using your Apple Watch in low power mode, you might notice certain other features not working normally as well. Here are the Apple Watch features that can be affected by the low power mode.
Low Power Mode (watchOS 9) vs Power Reserve (watchOS 8)
You might be wondering why Apple decided on changing Power Reserve to Low Power Mode. Is it even really an upgrade or not? Well, let’s take a quick look at the differences between the two features.
On the other hand, Low Power Mode doesn’t disable every single feature of the watch. Instead, it turns off some battery intensive features and manages others in a way that the battery life can be extended.
