macOS has no place that shows the battery of an Apple Watch. The watch connects to its iPhone, not to the Mac, so the Mac does not list it with your other accessories. There are two ways around this. Both go through the iPhone.
Why macOS does not show the watch
The battery lists in macOS are for the Mac and the Bluetooth accessories that are connected to it. An Apple Watch is not one of them.
- The Bluetooth menu does not list the watch.
- The Batteries widget on a Mac does not list it. See the devices the Batteries widget shows.
- The menu bar has no place for it.
No setting in macOS changes this.
On the watch and the iPhone
These are the places Apple gives you.
- On the watch. Press the side button to open Control Center. The battery percentage is there.
- On the iPhone. Add the Batteries widget to the Home Screen or the Today View. It shows the iPhone, the watch and your AirPods.
iPhone Mirroring
If you use iPhone Mirroring, you can read the iPhone’s Batteries widget from the Mac.
- On the iPhone, touch and hold the Home Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget, and add Batteries.
- On the Mac, open the iPhone Mirroring app.
- Look at the widget on the mirrored Home Screen. It shows the watch.
iPhone Mirroring needs a recent Mac, a recent iPhone and the same Apple Account on both. It is not available in every region. You have to open the app each time, and the iPhone must be locked and near the Mac.
Show the Apple Watch battery in the Mac menu bar
BatteryBud is a battery monitor for Mac. It shows an Apple Watch through the iPhone it is paired with. The iPhone reports the level of the watch, so the watch needs no setup of its own.
Set up the iPhone once.
- Connect the iPhone to your Mac with a cable, and unlock it.
- Tap Trust on the iPhone, then enter its passcode.
- In Finder, select the iPhone in the sidebar and click General.
- Turn on Show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi, then click Apply.
After that you do not need the cable. The watch appears next to the iPhone in BatteryBud, with its percentage. You can pin it to the menu bar, see its history, and set an alert for a level you pick, for example 30% before you go to bed.
macOS can ask for Local Network access. BatteryBud needs it to read the watch over Wi-Fi. Without it, the watch is read only while the iPhone is on a cable.
The full steps for the iPhone are in how to check your iPhone battery from a Mac.
The limits
- The iPhone must be reachable. It must be on the same Wi-Fi network as the Mac, or on a cable. A locked iPhone that is not charging can drop off Wi-Fi, and BatteryBud then shows the last level and when it last saw the watch.
- The watch must be in range of its iPhone. The level comes from the iPhone.
- No battery health for the watch. To see it, open Settings on the watch, tap Battery, then Battery Health.
Other apps that show the watch
BatteryBud is not the only one. AirBuddy 3 shows an Apple Watch through its paired iPhone, and so does AirBattery, a free app. Both need the same step of a cable and Trust for the iPhone. See AirBuddy compared with BatteryBud and AirBattery compared with BatteryBud.