Nothing kills the motivation of a midday workout faster than raising your wrist and seeing a dead, black watch screen. Honestly, did you even work out if your smartwatch didn’t give you credit for it?
Sure, most newer smartwatch models can now last more than a day, including a full night of sleep tracking. But even some of the top powerhouses, including the Pixel Watch 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, tend to crap out midway through day two when there’s no charger in sight (mine’s on my nightstand).
After one too many days staring at a dark screen and missing key health metrics as a result, I finally started looking for ways to squeeze a few more hours out of my watch — long enough to at least get back to my charger at the end of the day without skipping a beat.
1. Lower the display brightness
Most people overlook this simple tweak: Your watch can usually run at a lower brightness setting without losing visibility. It’s one of the easiest ways to extend battery life without giving up any features, and it can add an extra hour or two of runtime. Just make sure to keep adaptive brightness on so that the display adjusts automatically as you move between indoors and outdoors, since the lowest setting can be unreadable in direct sunlight.
To adjust brightness, go to Settings > Display > Brightness.
2. Disable ‘Hey Google’ or hotword detection
Being able to summon Google’s voice assistant (now Gemini) hands-free is convenient, but it’s hardly essential and comes with a steep battery cost. Your watch is constantly listening in the background for the
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