Improve Apple Watch battery life in four easy steps

the battery on the Apple watch will last you about a day. But with heavy usage that can be cut down quite a bit. Sure, you can disable the heart-rate sensor or stop notifications to improve it, but let's not forget that this is a smart watch and we want to take advantage of all of these cool features. That's why I've got four tips for you. That could help improve battery life without sacrificing any of the Apple watch's functionality. Number one: watch faces. Sure, Mickey looks cool, but that dancing mouse isn't going to make your battery last longer. Watch faces with more black than colors will use less energy. To choose a new watch face, perform a hard long press on the screen and select one of the more basic faces. I like the modular one. Next up, brightness. [UNKNOWN] like on your smart phone having the display all the way up will drain the battery quicker. The easiest way to change the brightness is to open the Apple watch app on your iPhone, tap Brightness & Text Size, and slide the brightness bar down to the halfway point, or even lower. This can also be done directly on the Apple Watch in the settings app. Number three: reducing motion and transparency. While this will limit some of the animations on the watch, it will also put less of a strain on the graphics processor which, in turn, could improve battery life. To do this, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone Press general, followed by accessibility, where you will find reduced motion, and reduced transparency. Last but not least, you can turn on grey scale mode. Not this will take away the vibrant colors on your watch. But, it could extend your battery, which in my opinion, could be a fair trade off. This can be done by opening the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tapping general, followed by accessibility Then toggle the grayscale switch from off to on. As a bonus you could turn on the Apple Watch's power reserve mode, but I would only do this if you're in a real pinch because it will take all of the smart out of your smart watch. Power reserve mode can be turned on by holding the power button on the side of the Apple watch. You will no longer be able to run Apps or communicate with others, all you can do is see the time. So in my opinion it's really not worth it most of the time. For more how-tos like this one, be sure to check out howto.cnet.com. You can also reach out to me on Twitter with any questions or comments you have about the Apple Watch I'm Dan Graziano for CNET thanks for watching.