We’ve been using the Pixel Watch for a few weeks now, and you can check out our review here. During that time, we’ve also been playing around with the settings to see how we can make the battery last a bit longer. And we’ve done so successfully. So we are here to show you how you can increase your battery life on the Pixel Watch. We’ve bene able to get it to last over 30 hours. Which might not seem like a lot, but where it was only lasting about 15 hours before, that’s pretty good.
How to conserve battery life on Google Pixel Watch
In this article, we’re going to go through some tips to help you conserve battery life on your Google Pixel Watch. This will include some things that you might already know, like keeping always-on display off, or changing your screen timeout. While there are others that you might not know. So let’s get started.
Adjust your notifications settings
First off, make sure to go through your notifications settings on the Pixel Watch app. Turn off anything that you don’t need buzzing on your wrist. That is going to save quite a bit of battery life on your watch. In fact, it might be the single biggest thing you can do here. For example, on my Pixel Watch, I’ve turned off everything besides messaging apps. I have a handful of apps enabled for notifications. That includes Fitbit, Messages, Gmail, Telegram, Reddit, Calendar, Instagram and Twitter. Among a few others. I don’t really need notifications from the Best Buy app appearing on my wrist, unless I’ve bought something and are going to pick it up – which is rare. But your financial apps like credit cards and banks, you may still want enabled. Especially if you get notifications for purchases. By limiting your notifications, you are able to get better battery life as the watch is using less data and waking up less frequently.
Open the Pixel Watch appTap on NotificationsTap on See all apps from last 7 daysTap on the dropdown, and select all apps
The Always-On Display
By default, Google has the Always-on Display turned off out of the box. Which was a bit surprising, usually that is on and factored into the battery life numbers. But that’s not the case with Google. So if you did turn it on, turn it off. We have seen some on Reddit note that if you turn on the AOD and turn off the tilt-to-wake and touch-to-wake options, they are getting better battery life. We haven’t yet tried that out. But you can try that out yourself.
Open the Pixel Watch AppTap on Watch PreferencesTap on Display & Gestures
Change your screen timeout length
This sort of ties into the always-on display tip above, but changing your screen timeout length can add a few hours of battery life to your Pixel Watch. It defaults to 15 seconds. I’ve changed it to 10 seconds on mine, and have seen quite the difference so far. If you’re just glancing at your watch for the time, then 10 seconds is more than enough time.
Open the Pixel Watch AppTap on Watch PreferencesTap on Display & Gestures
Limit your tiles
Wear OS allows you to add tiles to the side of your watch face. So you can scroll over and see things like the Weather, your Fitbit steps, heart rate, YouTube Music and much more. But, those tiles use data, and whether you have a LTE or a Bluetooth watch, it’s still going to be using up precious battery. So limit these tiles to those you absolutely need. On my Pixel Watch, I have it set to only the Weather and my heart rate. Just the necessary things really. I do have the weather on my watch face, but it only shows the current temp. By swiping over to the tile, I can see the high and low for the day, as well as the conditions, a lot easier than opening the app. This is something that most people won’t think about, but tiles do use up data and power. So slimming these down is a good tip to use.
Open the Pixel Watch AppTap on Tiles
Turn on Bedtime Mode
This is something that should happen automatically, honestly. And it should sync with your phone too, with Digital Wellbeing’s Bedtime stuff. But it doesn’t. So you do need to do this manually. If you don’t put your Pixel Watch into Bedtime Mode, it can drain as much as 40% overnight. Whereas, with it on, it’s usually less than 20%. It’s also a good idea if you toss and turn a lot, as you could end up opening apps and such on your watch, which can drain it even more. One night, it went from 70% down to 9% for me, because an app was open and had the screen on for a lot of the night (my arm was under a pillow, so it didn’t wake me up).
On your watch, Swipe down to access the Quick Settings.Tap on the Moon icon, it’s in the second row up, on the left side – by default.
Download music for streaming
All of us should know that streaming music uses a lot more juice than playing downloaded music. Of course, both can use juice, but downloaded music uses a lot less, as it doesn’t need a data connection – just Bluetooth. So another tip to conserve battery life is, to download your music to stream offline. Currently this only works with YouTube Music, but we expect that to change in the future. The Pixel Watch does have 32GB of storage on-board, so there is room to store a few playlists, or more on your watch. And you could also connect your Pixel Buds to the Pixel Watch. A good reason to get the LTE model over the WiFi model. As you can go for a run and leave your phone at home.
Open the YouTube Music app on your watchAfter you’ve signed in, it’ll show you playlists.Tap on a playlist that you want to download.Next, it’ll show a download button and a play button. Tap on the download button.
Wrap Up
These are a few ways that you can conserve battery life on your Google Pixel Watch. It’s also worth noting that the battery life will get better each day you use it. As the watch starts to learn how you are using it, so it can last longer. A lot like how you Pixel phone will also adapt the battery to your schedule to last longer.
