Ultra - How to enable Optimized Battery Charging?

[Buadhai]

When I first got my Ultra last year it would always charge overnight to 80% and then last all day; even when I was doing three or four scuba dives per day using the Oceanic+ app.

Then I upgraded to WatchOS 9.4. That started four or five days of rapid battery drain. I guess to compensate the watch started charging to 100% instead of the previous usual of 80%.

I had hoped that when battery usage returned to normal, the watch would resume charging to 80%.

It did not. It still charges to 100% and usually ends up with 60-70% when I hit the sack.

I thought that the goal of optimized charging was to keep the battery at between 20 and 80% for longer battery life.

I do and always have had "Optimized Charge Limit" enabled on the watch.

How do I get the watch to actually use that setting?

What I've tried:

• Disabling and enabling that setting
• Disabling that setting, restarting the watch and enabling that setting.

Any other ideas?

 

[jz0309]

When I first got my Ultra last year it would always charge overnight to 80% and then last all day; even when I was doing three or four scuba dives per day using the Oceanic+ app.

Then I upgraded to WatchOS 9.4. That started four or five days of rapid battery drain. I guess to compensate the watch started charging to 100% instead of the previous usual of 80%.

I had hoped that when battery usage returned to normal, the watch would resume charging to 80%.

It did not. It still charges to 100% and usually ends up with 60-70% when I hit the sack.

I thought that the goal of optimized charging was to keep the battery at between 20 and 80% for longer battery life.

I do and always have had "Optimized Charge Limit" enabled on the watch.

How do I get the watch to actually use that setting?

What I've tried:

• Disabling and enabling that setting
• Disabling that setting, restarting the watch and enabling that setting.

Any other ideas?

About Optimized Battery Charging on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

With Optimized Battery Charging, your Apple Watch learns from your daily charging habits to improve the lifespan of your battery. And supported Apple Watch models offer additional battery charge optimizations with Optimized Charge Limit.

support.apple.com

There’s a section about the Ultra

 

[Buadhai]

About Optimized Battery Charging on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

With Optimized Battery Charging, your Apple Watch learns from your daily charging habits to improve the lifespan of your battery. And supported Apple Watch models offer additional battery charge optimizations with Optimized Charge Limit.

support.apple.com

There’s a section about the Ultra

Thanks for the reference.

Which says: "This feature learns from your daily usage to determine when to charge to an optimized limit and when to allow a full charge."

Which is what I thought and which is not happening on my Ultra.

It worked as described before WatchOS 9.4, but it's not working now. I have location services set up exactly as described in the article.

It should have learned by now that my daily usage does not require a full charge. Perhaps it needs an incentive.

 

[chrfr]

Thanks for the reference.

Which says: "This feature learns from your daily usage to determine when to charge to an optimized limit and when to allow a full charge."

Which is what I thought and which is not happening on my Ultra.

It worked as described before WatchOS 9.4, but it's not working now. I have location services set up exactly as described in the article.

It should have learned by now that my daily usage does not require a full charge. Perhaps it needs an incentive.

Mine has pretty much stopped doing optimized charging as well. I see the line indicating optimized charging when I first drop it on the charger but then it charges to full. I don't think it started with 9.4, though.

 

[Buadhai]

Mine has pretty much stopped doing optimized charging as well. I see the line indicating optimized charging when I first drop it on the charger but then it charges to full. I don't think it started with 9.4, though.

What a the usual charge level at the end of you day?

 

[jz0309]

Thanks for the reference.

Which says: "This feature learns from your daily usage to determine when to charge to an optimized limit and when to allow a full charge."

Which is what I thought and which is not happening on my Ultra.

It worked as described before WatchOS 9.4, but it's not working now. I have location services set up exactly as described in the article.

It should have learned by now that my daily usage does not require a full charge. Perhaps it needs an incentive.

one other thing you could try is to un-pair/re-pair ...
my usage is different, I wear my Ultra for say Mon 5am - Tue 8pm incl sleep tracking and then put it on the charger overnight while wearing my S7 for sleep tracking, so every other day I charge to 100$.

and I know that this is not going to help your situation, I do have AC+ and will have it for as long as I'm going to own the Ultra, if battery life drops, it's covered, no need to spend time thinking about battery, battery health etc, but that's just me and YMMV.

 

[Buadhai]

one other thing you could try is to un-pair/re-pair ...

Interesting that you suggest that. Not long after the 9.4 update I discovered that my Ultra no longer had cellular coverage. I was unable to re-establish it myself and was told to call the carrier. They also were unable to re-establish coverage for the Ultra and told me I had to un-pair and re-pair before they would continue working on the issue.

I hesitated, but went ahead. What a mistake. It did not fix the cellular problem, but it did create hours and days of hassle for me. I had to re-add all my cards to Apple Pay. I had to re-setup parts of many apps including WorkOutDoors and Oceanic+. Many system settings were changed. For example, Assistive Touch was enabled. At first I couldn't figure out why I was getting all these odd suggestions about "double pinch" or why there were blue frames around many of the on-screen "buttons". Eventually I caught on and disabled "Assistive Touch". I'm still discovering little things that were changed or which failed to restore from backup. What a hassle.

So, before I ever do that again I will think long and hard about it.

And, yeah, AppleCare+ is a good idea.

 

[jz0309]

Interesting that you suggest that. Not long after the 9.4 update I discovered that my Ultra no longer had cellular coverage. I was unable to re-establish it myself and was told to call the carrier. They also were unable to re-establish coverage for the Ultra and told me I had to un-pair and re-pair before they would continue working on the issue.

I hesitated, but went ahead. What a mistake. It did not fix the cellular problem, but it did create hours and days of hassle for me. I had to re-add all my cards to Apple Pay. I had to re-setup parts of many apps including WorkOutDoors and Oceanic+. Many system settings were changed. For example, Assistive Touch was enabled. At first I couldn't figure out why I was getting all these odd suggestions about "double pinch" or why there were blue frames around many of the on-screen "buttons". Eventually I caught on and disabled "Assistive Touch". I'm still discovering little things that were changed or which failed to restore from backup. What a hassle.

So, before I ever do that again I will think long and hard about it.

And, yeah, AppleCare+ is a good idea.

yea, un-pair/re-pair is not a fun process, did it once a few years back, can't remember why but it was quite annoying.

reason I suggested it is that it resets your watch and the charging might indeed learn again, but, I totally get your hesitancy ...

Hope that it's either a bug and Apple will fix it soon or that you Ultra just might need a little more time to "learn".

 

[Buadhai]

yea, un-pair/re-pair is not a fun process, did it once a few years back, can't remember why but it was quite annoying.

It's a bit worse than annoying. I know that the watch is backup up to the paired phone, but it seems to be a rather limited and inaccurate backup. Another example: I have five watch faces set up. After the re-pair there were about ten. Some were faces that I'd tried and discarded, but a few I'd never seen before. And, on the faces that I use, many of the complications were missing and had to be set up again. (If I remembered what the were.)

It looks like I'm SOL with AppleCare+. I thought you could extend any time before the initial coverage expires, but that seems to not be the case. You have to do it within 30 days of purchase.

Oh, well.

 

[Michaelangelo28]

Unpair and repair. Not fun but somehow works.

 

[Buadhai]

Unpair and repair. Not fun but somehow works.

Well, the timeline is:

• WatchOS 9.4 broke Optimized Battery Charging.
• A week or so later I un-paired and re-paired for an unrelated reason (cellular coverage which may also have been broken by 9.4).

Un-pair/re-pair fixed neither the cellular problem nor the battery charging problem.

Sometimes it doesn't work. The problem is, that the process is enormously time consuming and tedious and, in my experience, quite unreliable.

 

[Michaelangelo28]

Well, the timeline is:

• WatchOS 9.4 broke Optimized Battery Charging.
• A week or so later I un-paired and re-paired for an unrelated reason (cellular coverage which may also have been broken by 9.4).

Un-pair/re-pair fixed neither the cellular problem nor the battery charging problem.

Sometimes it doesn't work. The problem is, that the process is enormously time consuming and tedious and, in my experience, quite unreliable.

True enough. Stressful isnt.

 

[Buadhai]

Last night when I put my Ultra on the charger it told me it was going to do Optimized charging. First time I'd seen that message since installing 9.4. I figured it would, as before, charge to 80%.

When I got up this morning it was charged to 100%.

Clearly, something seriously wrong with Optimized Battery Charging.

 

[jakephish]

Mine is broken too. So frustrated that I cant just touch the charge icon to set it to go to 80 vs 100.

 

[Wackery]

Last night when I put my Ultra on the charger it told me it was going to do Optimized charging. First time I'd seen that message since installing 9.4. I figured it would, as before, charge to 80%.

When I got up this morning it was charged to 100%.

Clearly, something seriously wrong with Optimized Battery Charging.

It’s working as intended

 

[chrfr]

It’s working as intended

It isn't.

 

[Kottu]

When I bought my AWU last year, for a week or two I was careful to charge it until 80% and use it. Later it started charging only to 80% itself. Precis som I want and it was meant to be. But, once I had to be away from home for a couple of days so I forced it to charge fully. That's it, it doesn't matter how many times I tried, it charges fully if I don't remove it from the charger. I asked Apple support about it and they told me to deactivate and activate optimised charging.

Is it so difficult for Apple to let us decide how we want to charge our devices? I wish if there was an app like Al Dente for iPhone and Apple watch. At least on iPhone I can set up a shortcut to alert me when its charged to a 80%.

 

[arc of the universe]

i dont own an ultra. but am interested in this.
with my Series 8 and with my iPhone, optimisation is working the way its intended on both devices.

here is how optimisation works for all devices, including the ultra:
(taken from apple's support doc)
"Your watch uses on-device machine learning to learn your daily charging routine so that Optimized Battery Charging activates only when your watch predicts it will be connected to a charger for an extended period of time. The algorithm aims to ensure that your Apple Watch is still fully charged when you remove it from the charger."

when i begin to charge my iPhone when i go to bed, there appears a push message on the iPhone that reads something like "iPhone will fully charge at 4:30 am" or something like that. it purposefully delays the time it reaches 100%
it knows what time i have set the alarm and will be 100% before i wake up.

the ultra is no different on this. optimisation on the ultra works the same way. it will be 100% towards the time you wake up.

but. the ultra has an additional setting, not found on other apple watches. Optimized Charge Limit.

(from apple support doc for the Ultra)
"Optimized Charge Limit changes dynamically depending on how you use your Apple Watch Ultra. Based on your usage patterns, your watch might charge to 100% on some days, and less on others."

i think apple added the Limit toggle for the Ultra to make it more controllable by the user to respond a wider variety of situations where the user wants it to be fully charged at a time that doesn't reflect their usual schedule, such as when you start a long hike at 3:00am or something. or, conversely, maybe keeping it around 80% if your daily activities dont warrant it.

 

[Buadhai]

i think apple added the Limit toggle for the Ultra to make it more controllable by the user to respond a wider variety of situations where the user wants it to be fully charged at a time that doesn't reflect their usual schedule, such as when you start a long hike at 3:00am or something. or, conversely, maybe keeping it around 80% if your daily activities dont warrant it.

And that's what it did pre 9.4, but not anymore. Before 9.4 my Ultra would charge overnight to 80% and have around 50% remaining at the end of the day. Now it charges to 100% every night and usually has around 70% remaining at the end of the day.

If that's what Apple intended, so be it. But I don't think it is.

 

[Kottu]

AirPods Pro 2 are the best. As I have both 1 and 2, I normally use 1 until around 12 noon and use APP2 afterwards. So when I put it on charge, it says that it will be fully charged at 11.30 AM. 2 days ago I used it only after 16.30, it showed this morning that it will be charged fully at 16.00 hrs. As I had to use it in the morning around 07.00 hrs, now it shows that it will be changed at 06.30!

I wish if other devices adapted the pattern quickly as my APP2.

 

[Mack Roomers]

I’ve had my AWU since mid march and I’ve this is one of the features I’ve wanted most, but I’m still waiting for optimized charging and charge limit to kick in. I have been throwing it on the stand at bedtime and wearing my S4 for sleep tracking, I wonder if this has somehow Prevented it from activating? it seems like it shouldn’t affect it

 

[chrfr]

I’ve had my AWU since mid march and I’ve this is one of the features I’ve wanted most, but I’m still waiting for optimized charging and charge limit to kick in. I have been throwing it on the stand at bedtime and wearing my S4 for sleep tracking, I wonder if this has somehow Prevented it from activating? it seems like it shouldn’t affect it

No, it just seems to be a bug with 9.4. My Ultra was routinely limiting to 80%, and when I put the watch on the charger, I initially see the icon that it’s going to only 80%, but it charges all the way to 100%.

 

[MacManiac76]

It's supposed to charge from 80% up to 100% starting about 2 hours before you usually put the watch on in the morning.

 

[chrfr]

It's supposed to charge from 80% up to 100% starting about 2 hours before you usually put the watch on in the morning.

No, we are talking about the Optimized Charge Limit, which is a feature exclusive to the Ultra. Read here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213338
It will stop the charge altogether at about 80% on days it thinks you don’t need all 100%. This is the feature that’s stopped working, and in fact, I don’t believe I am getting any optimized charging functionality on my Ultra anymore.

 

[MacManiac76]

No, we are talking about the Optimized Charge Limit, which is a feature exclusive to the Ultra. Read here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213338
It will stop the charge altogether at about 80% on days it thinks you don’t need all 100%. This is the feature that’s stopped working, and in fact, I don’t believe I am getting any optimized charging functionality on my Ultra anymore.

I realize that now after one of the earlier replies. Seems like a nice new feature to have to extend the lifetime of the battery. I've had my Apple Watch SS Series 6 for about 2.5 years now and the battery health is at 81% right now. I charge it every night when I go to bed and put it back on immediately when I get up in the morning and always have Optimized Charging enabled. It would probably be a little higher now if it had the Optimized charge limit feature that the Ultra has. Hopefully it is just a bug and will be fixed for the Ultra owners and is maybe a feature to come on the standard Apple Watches in the future.