Battery & sleep
How your device manages its own power — frugal on the wrist, generous on the dock — and how it stays reachable while it rests.
Your device looks after its own battery. You never put it to sleep or wake it by hand — it reads how you're using it and steps its power up and down on its own. The one thing worth understanding is that it behaves differently on battery than plugged in, because the goal is different: on the go it's protecting a small battery; on the dock it's a glanceable display that should stay ready.
The stages
Left untouched, the device steps down through a few stages, each dimmer and lower-power than the last:
| Stage | What you see | What's happening |
|---|---|---|
| Awake | Full brightness | You're using it |
| Dim | Dimmer | A few seconds idle — a short grace step before the screen turns off |
| Screen off | Dark | The panel is off, but it's still watching for a raise, a tap, or a button |
| Deep sleep | Dark | On battery only — the processor itself naps between heartbeats |
| Dormant | Dark | The deepest rest, after a long stretch untouched — nearly everything powers down, and it wakes on motion |
Any input — a raise, a tap, a button press — brings it straight back to Awake. It never gets stuck half-dim or unresponsive; there's always a way back.
On battery vs. plugged in
This is the real difference, and it's deliberate:
On battery, the device is frugal. It dims within seconds, turns the screen off shortly after, and — if you leave it alone for a while — lets the processor deep-sleep and eventually go fully dormant. It's optimizing for days of standby, not minutes of screen time.
Plugged in (docked or charging), it relaxes. By default it stays awake as a glanceable display — a clock or status face you can read across the room — and it will not deep-sleep or go dormant while it has power to spare. If you'd rather it dim on the dock too, that's a setting.
The switch is instant: plug in and a resting device wakes and stays ready; unplug and it begins its battery-saving descent again.
Staying reachable
Your device talks to the companion over Bluetooth, and the radio is one of the larger battery draws — so on battery, once the screen is off, the device quietly slows its radio down. It checks in with the companion less often instead of dozens of times a second, and it sleeps through the gaps.
You won't notice day to day — a raise or a tap wakes it instantly no matter what, because that's a physical signal, not a radio one. The only effect is that a command sent from the Mac while the device is resting may take a fraction of a second longer to land. When it's disconnected and idle on battery, it also announces itself less often, which trades a slightly slower reconnect for real battery savings.
On the dock, none of that throttling happens. Power is free there, so the device keeps its radio quick and the companion stays snappy.
The deepest rest
After a long unbroken stretch with nothing happening — on battery — the device goes dormant. It quietly saves the glance you were on, powers almost everything off, and sleeps until you pick it up (it wakes on motion) or a timer nudges it to refresh.
Coming back is a fresh start, but it doesn't feel like a reboot: the device restores the glance you left on and shows it before it finishes reconnecting, so waking it looks like… waking it.
Dormant is what turns "a day" of standby into "many days." It only ever happens on battery, never while you're actively using the device, and never while it's charging.