It’s exciting to wear a Samsung smartwatch and see it track your metrics in real-time. But if you want to use it for longer before you put it back on its charging dock, you need to learn how to save battery on any Samsung Galaxy Watch.
Let me say this:
If you’re pushing your Samsung Galaxy Watch to the extreme without considering its battery life, you’re doing it wrong.
And to be clear, it doesn’t make sense to activate multiple features to run simultaneously and then complain about your Samsung Watch not working after only a few months of use.
So, in this guide, I show you 11 ways to save battery and use your watch for longer on a single full charge.
How to Save Battery on Samsung Galaxy Watch
The following are 11 ways to save the battery life so that you can use your Samsung Galaxy Watch for longer:
1. Disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi When Not in Use
You need Bluetooth to sync your Samsung smartwatch with the Galaxy Wearable app and Wi-Fi to access the Internet right from your wrist.
But that’s already obvious, right?
The problem is the tendency to leave Wi-Fi and Bluetooth active when you don’t necessarily need them in the first place.
So if you notice that your watch isn’t keeping charge for longer than 48 hours, I strongly suggest that you check whether these connections are always active and turn them off.
Also, I strongly advise turning Bluetooth or Wi-Fi on only when it’s necessary.
2. Lower the Display’s Brightness
Samsung Galaxy smartwatches have crisp and vibrant displays. Every time you look at the watch, it almost feels as if you’re staring at text and graphics in full high-definition.
What’s more?
Samsung even allows you to enhance the display’s brightness if you need more light on the screen.
However, every time you increase screen brightness, you sacrifice a part of the battery charge that you would have otherwise saved if you lower screen brightness.
To be abundantly clear, higher brightness is useful under direct sunlight. Outside of this scenario, there really is no benefit of having the brightness level set to full.
So lower the brightness of the watch’s display, save the battery, and keep using the device for an extended period.
- Wake the screen and swipe up to open the menu.
- Choose the Settings icon.
- Scroll down until you find the Display option and tap it.
- Tap the Brightness indicator.
- Use the on-screen dial to lower brightness.
And that’s it.
3. Turn Off the Raise to Wake Feature
The Raise to Wake on a Samsung Galaxy Watch just doesn’t cut it for me, and for good reasons.
First, I don’t like the idea that screen wakes up every time I raise my wrist. After all, my hands are always in motion unless I’m deep asleep. Furthermore, my wrist’s motion doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to use the watch.
Second, the Raise to Wake feature consumes the watch’s battery for absolutely no important reason whatsoever.
If you have this feature active on your smartwatch, turn it off. Doing so helps to extend runtime and enhance the overall quality of the battery.
- Open the Galaxy Wearable App on your paired phone.
- Tap Settings.
- Select Advanced.
- Choose Motion.
- Tap Wake-Up Gesture to turn off.
4. Stop Unnecessary Notifications
One of the things that a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch does very well is to send you notifications from your smartphone. That way, you can stay in the loop on the things that really matter.
But enabling notifications from ever app on your phone can drain the battery fast.
I won’t recommend that you disable notifications entirely. I strongly recommending turning off alerts that aren’t appropriate and remain only with the options that matter.
For example, while call alerts may be useful because they have a sense of urgency, it’s highly unlikely that a social media notification would even add value to your busy schedule.
Go to the Galaxy Wearable app, and check the apps that send notifications to your smartwatch. Decide which ones are important and disable alerts from everything else.
5. Uninstall Apps You Don’t Need
Installing many apps on your Samsung Galaxy Watch isn’t a smart move, and there are two reasons why.
First, apps take up space, and the more install the smaller the storage gets. Eventually, you end up with a timepiece that’s too slow to function properly.
Second, apps drain battery. Every time you open an app and forget to close it, it runs in the background and consumes a big chunk of the battery.
The solution is simple. If you installed apps that you don’t need, remove them from the watch. Also, restrict apps from running in the background, unless it’s mandatory.
6. Allow Automatic Battery Saver Mode
Some Samsung Galaxy Watches have automatic power saver mode, which limits apps and built-in features from using a lot of battery power.
Depending on the model you use, you can set the battery saver mode to activate automatically once the battery level gets down to 10 or 15%.
Keep in mind that once the battery-saver mode is activate, you will no longer see notifications, and your location, always-on display, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi will be inactive.
7. Turn Battery Saver Mode On Manually
If your Samsung Watch model does not support the automatic battery saver mode, you will need to activate it manually from settings app to save battery.
To turn the battery saver mode on:
- Swipe the screen from the top to open the quick access panel.
- Tap on the battery icon to activate power saving mode.
You can also use the watch’s settings app.
- Go to Settings.
- Choose Battery.
- Tap Power Saving.
Your Samsung Galaxy Watch should now start conserving battery energy for extended use.
8. Disable Always-on Display
You aren’t going to be looking at your Samsung Galaxy Watch screen all the time. Therefore, leaving the always-on display active is a bad way to use the device.
If anything, the always-on display is one of the features you don’t really need – at least not on a daily basis.
You should turn it off to save battery.
To do this:
- Swipe the display up.
- Go to Settings
- Choose Display option.
- Toggle off the always-on display.
Once you turn this feature off, your Samsung Watch will automatically default to the default screen time, which is 15 seconds of inactivity.
9. Activate Theater Mode to Save Battery Samsung Galaxy Watch
Turning on theater mode on your Samsung Galaxy watch can go a long way to extend battery usage beyond the normal time.
Let me put it this way:
Every Samsung Galaxy watch has a ton of built-in features, including alarms, always on display, system sounds, notifications, vibrations, and wake up gestures.
While these premium features are great, they easily suck the battery juice out of your watch much faster when they’re all active.
Therefore, disabling some or all of them can go a long way to make the battery last longer.
Sadly, though, turning these features off one at a time can be boring and time consuming. This is where the theatre mode comes in.
As soon as you activate the theater mode, alarms, all alerts, always on display, system sounds, vibrations, and wake up gestures go into inactive state, hence saving you some hours on the battery.
Therefore to activate the theater mode:
- Press the Home/Power button to wake the display.
- Swipe the screen down from the top to open the quick access panel.
- Swipe left two times to access see the theater mode icon.
- Tap the icon.
Note that you also have the option to set how long you want the mode to be active.
10. Minimize Your Screen Timeout
The more your Samsung Watch screen stays on the more battery it consumes. So reduce how long the display should stay active.
For example, if you have Galaxy Watch 5 or Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, set the timeout to 15 or 30 seconds instead of 1 minute.
Go for the least timeout period so the display turns off faster when the watch isn’t in use.
To change the screen timeout:
- Swipe the screen display up to open apps.
- Tap the Settings app.
- Choose Display.
- Scroll down to Screen Timeout.
- Set the screen timeout to 15 seconds.
It’s as simple as that.
11. Disable “OK Google” Detection
Your Samsung Galaxy Watch has an onboard microphone that answers calls and commands Google Assistant through your voice.
Apparently, Google Assistant comes in handy when you don’t have the time to interact with the watch but you still want to issue commands.
However, the technology does drain the battery.
Turn off “OK Google” detection to increase battery runtime. To do this:
- Access the quick panel by swiping the screen down from the top.
- Tap Settings.
- Select Google and then tap Assistant.
- Toggle off the ‘Hey Google” and “Speech Output”.
It is as simple as that.
Final Thoughts
It takes about 3 to 4 hours to charge a Samsung Galaxy Watch from 0 to 100%. And fast charging takes almost half the time.
Theoretically, you can expect the watch to last for up to 50 hours on a single charge. In reality, though, how long the battery lasts before the next charge will depend on the frequency of use and the number of active features.
I strongly suggest that you deactivate the features that you don’t need and focus on battery life optimization to boost performance.
