Learn about Optimized Battery Charging on the Apple Watch, how it reduces battery wear to extend its life, and the steps to disable it if you so choose.
What Optimized Battery Charging does
Just like on your iPhone, AirPods, and MacBook, Optimized Battery Charging on Apple Watch decreases wear on your battery and improves its lifecycle. It does this by gaining knowledge of your charging patterns to reduce the time it spends with a full charge.
When the feature is enabled, your watch will delay charging past 80% in certain situations. In these situations, the watch’s battery level will remain between 75% and 80%.
For example, if you charge your Watch every night for eight hours, the on-device learning detects this pattern. Then Optimized Battery Charging kicks in for those times when it knows you’ll be charging your Apple Watch for an extended amount of time. And you should still have a fully charged Watch when you remove it from the charger in the morning.
How to improve Optimized Battery Charging
Since Optimized Battery Charging uses that on-device intelligence to predict your charging pattern, it also knows enough to not engage at the wrong time. So if you’re traveling, for instance, the feature won’t activate.
Optimized charging is designed to activate only in locations where you spend the most time, such as your home and place of work.
To make sure your Watch recognizes your location, you can enable the following in Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services (if they aren’t already):
- Location Services: Turn on this toggle at the top of the Location Services screen.
- System Customization: Enable it from Location Services > System Services.
- Significant Locations: Turn it on in Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations.
Important: Some of the options under System Services will be grayed out on your Apple Watch. You will have to go to your iPhone Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services to turn them on or off.
For more on these settings, take a look at understanding iOS Location Services and what they do and how to keep your iPhone from knowing where you are going next.
Disable Optimized Battery Charging
When you buy a new Apple Watch, the feature is enabled by default. But of course, you can turn it off if you like.
- Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch and select Battery.
- Scroll down and select Battery Health.
- Turn off the toggle for Optimized Battery Charging and choose if you’d like to turn it off until tomorrow or turn off permanently.
Now that you know how Optimized Battery Charging works on Apple Watch and how to disable it if you need to, what are your thoughts on it? Have you left it enabled on your iPhone and found that it’s helpful? Let us know what you think!
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