Apple watches have never had great battery life. Despite Apple claiming a “full-day battery,” they still cite just 18 hours of battery life on the recently released Apple Watch Series 8. Now, while the watch actually lasts much longer than its 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 into play. So the next time you’re on the road and can’t charge your watch, don’t forget to use Apple Watch’s low power mode.
Apple Watch Low Power Mode (Power Reserve)
With the release of watchOS 9, Apple has made a couple of changes to the Apple Watch’s battery saving mode. In previous versions of watchOS, Power Reserve was the only way to ensure your Apple Watch could survive for more than a few days without recharging. However, with watchOS 9, you can use the new Low Power Mode to extend battery life.
In this article, we will see how to enable and disable Low Power Mode on your watch. In addition, we’ll also take a look at the features that Low Power Mode will disable to save battery life and a quick comparison between the new Low Power Mode and the old Power Reserve Mode.
How to enable low power mode
If your Apple Watch is running low on battery, you can quickly enable Low Power Mode. There are two ways to do this.
Using the Control Center
- Open 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 option next to ‘Low Power Mode’.
- Tap ‘Activate’. Alternatively, you can tap ‘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.
Use of settings
- Open the Settings app on your watch and tap ‘Battery’.
- Scroll down and enable the “Low Power Mode” option.
- Tap ‘Activate’. Alternatively, you can tap ‘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’ll see a yellow circle icon on Apple Watch .
Use low power mode when the battery is below 10%
When your Apple Watch is running low on battery (10% charge remaining), it will ask you to charge your Apple Watch or put it into low power mode. If you enable Low Power Mode through this message, it will automatically turn off once your Apple Watch has been charged to 80%.
How to disable low power mode
In case you no longer want to use Low Power Mode, you can also easily disable it. Once again, there are two ways to do this.
through the Control Center
- Open control center and tap the battery percentage (it should be yellow, if low power mode is on).
- Here, disable the toggle next to ‘Low Power Mode’.
via settings
- Open the Settings app and go to ‘Battery’.
- Here, disable the toggle next to ‘Low Power Mode’.
That is all; Low Power Mode is now disabled on your Apple Watch and it will continue to work as usual.
What does low power mode do?
That pretty much sums up the tutorial part, but if you’re curious and wondering how Low Power Mode saves and extends your Apple Watch’s battery life, let’s take a quick look behind the scenes.
Features disabled
Basically, Low Power Mode turns off a bunch of features that aren’t essential to the Apple Watch’s operation. As such, it disables features that are low priority, but consume a lot of battery power:
- always on display
- Continuous (background) heart rate measurements
- Heart rate notifications for low heart rate, high heart rate, irregular rhythm
- Background blood oxygen measurements (series 6 and later only)
- training reminders
Plus, if your iPhone isn’t near your Apple Watch, Low Power Mode goes even further and turns off two more things on your watch:
- Incoming calls and notifications
- Wi-Fi and cellular connections
Note: Apple says that notifications for incoming calls and other notifications will still be checked periodically by the Apple Watch in low power mode .
Features that could be affected
If you are using your Apple Watch in low power mode, you may notice that other functions are also not working normally. These are the Apple Watch features that may be affected by Low Power Mode.
- Background app refresh rate is greatly reduced
- Complications are not updated as often
- Animations and scrolling may appear less fluid
- Siri may respond slower and take longer to process requests
Low Power Mode (watchOS 9) vs. Power Reserve (watchOS 8)
You may be wondering why Apple decided to switch the power reserve to low power mode. Is it even really an update or not? Well, let’s take a quick look at the differences between the two features.
Power Reserve is the feature to extend battery life in watchOS 8 and earlier. This feature can be enabled by heading to the Apple Watch battery settings. This is similar to the new Low Power Mode, both in terms of why the feature exists and how it’s enabled.
However, Power Reserve used to disable all Apple Watch features except for the time display. This resulted in an extremely low power state for the watch, but also made the Apple Watch pretty useless.
On the other hand, Low Power Mode does not disable all watch features. Instead, it disables some battery-intensive features and manages others so that battery life can be extended.
Likewise, disabling power reserve mode was no mean feat. You had to press and hold the side button on the Apple Watch to restart the watch and disable the feature. On the other hand, turning off low power mode is very easy and doesn’t end up frustrating you.
Power Reserve was arguably a better feature because it really extended battery life by leaps and bounds. Personally, I put my watch on Power Reserve for a whole week and it lasted the entire time. However, with Low Power Mode, you can continue to use your Apple Watch as a smartwatch, although some features are missing.
Use Low Power Mode to extend battery life on Apple Watch
Well, this is how you can use the new low power mode on your Apple Watch in situations where you can’t charge your watch for a while. As you can see, enabling the feature is quite easy, and the best part is that disabling it later is just as easy. Although it will be some time before I can confidently say whether Low Power Mode is working or not, it looks like a promising upgrade to the power reserve feature in watchOS 8. So what do you think about Low Power Mode in watchOS 9? ? Let us know in the comments.