Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch to Save Battery Life [Tutorial]

Nov 21, 2019

Here’s how you can disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch to save precious battery life.

Need Extra Battery Life? Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch Right Away

There are a lot of ways to save battery life on the Apple Watch. If you have the latest Series 5 model then you can start off by disabling the always-on Retina display. You can then do things like lowering the brightness and so on.

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But with every new watchOS update, the Apple Watch is turning into a far more capable wearable which in turn needs lots of power to keep up with your daily tasks. This means that there are tons of tasks running in the background to keep everything up to date so that information is available to you at a moment’s notice. But if you are all about that extra battery life, then you might want to tone things down a little. So, take things further and disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch.

Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch Using iPhone

Step 1. Launch the Watch app.

Step 2. Tap on General.

Step 3. Tap on Background App Refresh.

Step 4. You can either turn off background app refresh on a selective basis or entirely by tapping on the Background App Refresh toggle switch at the top.

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Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch using iPhone

On Apple Watch

Step 1. Press the Digital Crown to go to the home screen.

Step 2. Tap on Settings.

Step 3. Tap on General.

Step 4. Tap on Background App Refresh.

Step 5. Just like the iPhone, you can either turn off the feature on an app-specific basis or entirely.

Disable Background App Refresh on Apple Watch

Even with the feature turned off, your Complications will continue to update in the background. But if it is an app that delivers news or maybe a game, then it will only refresh once you open it, saving you quite a bit of battery life. In fact, if there’s an app on your Apple Watch you installed for that ‘just in case’ moment, you can rest assured that it won’t take up much battery life now that Background App Refresh has been disabled.

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