Oliver Haslam on December 24, 2021, 11:45 pm

Some Apple Watch Users Can’t Charge Their Watch With watchOS 8.3 Installed

Following the release of watchOS 8.3 it appears that a growing number of people are unable to charge their Apple Watches.

The issue, which has popped up across social media, Reddit, and Apple’s own Support Communities, wasn’t there before installing the latest update.

As MacRumors points out, one user from Reddit suggests the problem is one related to third-party chargers rather than official Apple ones.

Updated my watch last night to 8.3, set it on my 3rd party charger this morning, came back after an hour and it had gained maybe 2%?

Tried the same thing with my spouse’s watch and her 3rd party charger with the same result.

Put them on the official charger, zoom, done charging in no time. Argh!

However, it does appear that some people are experiencing the same issue when using the official Apple Watch Charger, including the faster one that ships with Apple Watch Series 7 wearables.

Charging problems are more often with watchOS 8.3. It has become ridiculous, it charges around 2% in 10 minutes. What is this? The new ultra slow charging exclusively for Watch Series 7 or what.

Quite what is going on here isn’t clear, but it is unlikely that any software fix is going to be available until 2022 with engineers likely already in the holiday spirit. We don’t know whether Apple will have anyone working on watchOS through the holiday period, but we doubt it.