Brandon has been involved in tech journalism since the year 2000 and was part of the OG team of XDA and Pocketnow. He’s currently a staff writer for MakeUseOf, covering mobile and consumer tech. Brandon likes to help people take full advantage of their technology.
He lives outside of Philadelphia, PA, with his wife and three kids. When he’s not writing, Brandon plays drums and enjoys listening to music.
He’s a graduate of the Villanova School of Business where he got a bachelors degree in finance.
If you’re wearing a smartwatch (and please be careful if you’re buying a budget smartwatch), whether a Google Pixel watch, a Samsung Galaxy Watch, or an Apple Watch, you undoubtedly want a bit more battery life, even if modern smartwatches do a pretty good job at lasting the day (or more). Getting more battery life on your smartwatch (even if you’re using it for more than just fitness) has a lot to do with your watch face, especially when it comes to the standby battery drain that your always on display (or AOD, which you should turn off on your phone) uses to keep your screen on at all times. You don’t have to disable AOD, that’s not what I’m suggesting, but you should make key changes to your watch face to decrease power consumption. Here’s what to do.
I changed 3 hidden Android settings and my phone suddenly had more battery life
These settings will instantly make your phone feel faster plus noticeably improve battery life.
Pick watch faces that use less battery
OLED screens save power when pixels are off
Most smartwatches use an OLED display. That means that each pixel is self-illuminated and there is no backlight. That means that black pixels use zero power, and so you want to maximize the amount of black pixels to maximize battery, especially if you use AOD. When picking elements to display, focus on minimal complications, text with thin fonts, and using as much black as possible. While this might sound boring, remember that your watch is an accessory to your phone—a helpful companion that leads you to your phone (with its big battery) to do real work and see more detailed updates. Your watch is not a mini phone, it’s a limited window into your phone.
Set a minimal watch face to save battery
The more black the better
One of the best ways to maximize battery life on your watch is to pick the right watch face. That means starting with the Photos watch face (on Apple Watch this is called Photos watch face, on Samsung it’s called MyPhotos+, and on Pixel Watch it’s also called Photos watch face). In each of these cases, you can pick any photo you want to be your background. You can search Google Images, or look in your own photo library, to find a picture that has a lot of black. I was able to find so many great minimal mostly black watch faces on Google Images, including the above, by searching for “mostly black wallpaper with design” or “minimal OLED wallpapers for smartwatch”.
Your best bet is to find the minimal wallpaper on your phone, then use the Apple Watch, Galaxy Wearable or Google Pixel watch app to pick the photo background, pick the minimal wallpaper, then set up your watch to have a simple number of complications. Try to avoid using complications that have a lot of non-black imagery, because they all consume a lot of power. I actually found the above wallpaper on Etsy for $3.10, but you can find many OLED-friendly wallpapers for free, or make your own.
Customize your watch face
Reduce complications to save battery
When customizing your watch face, pick as few complications as possible. Things like fitness indicators, the time, weather conditions and other simple UI elements are fine. Just don’t pick complications that light up a lot of pixels—and thus use a lot of power—like busy calendar complications or large icons of any kind. Just keep it simple, and keep it black.
Since most smartwatches today natively run full watch apps, there’s really no need to fill your watch face with information. If you want to get the weather, just tap your watch to take it out of sleep, swipe to your app tray and open the weather app. Instead of using your AOD to display your next calendar appointment, which uses a lot of pixels and thus a lot of power, instead wake up your watch and go to the calendar app. Or better yet, press and hold the button on your watch to bring up the voice command and ask “what is my next appointment?” which uses much less power than having your next appointment on your screen at all times.
Just keep it simple, and keep it black.
Save battery by picking minimal wallpaper for your smartwatch
The more black the better
While you don’t have to buy a minimal wallpaper off of Etsy like I did, you should seek out a minimal and mostly black wallpaper for your watch face if you want to minimize power draw. And to compliment it, choose simple and thin elements like a font for the time that is thin, and complications that use as few pixels as possible.
For your must-have complications, each app gives you a choice of complications with different styles. If you take the time to look at the different styles of complications for a given app, you’ll notice some are simpler and have more black. Pick those, and save battery, in instances where you must have complications.
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The Google Pixel Watch 4 is the 2025 smartwatch from Google with Gemini AI built in.
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