7 simple Oura Ring settings that can quietly save you days of battery life

So, you have an Oura Ring 4, and you love what it tells you about your sleep, recovery and daily habits, but you don’t love how often you have to reach for the charger.

For a device that prides itself on being effortless, battery anxiety is one of the few things that can quietly undermine the experience.

The good news is that the popular smart ring isn’t bad at battery life; it’s just sensitive to how you use it.

A few background features, syncing habits and charging behaviours can shave days off its endurance without delivering much extra value in return.

The better news is that fixing this doesn’t require giving up your favourite metrics or turning your smart ring into a dumb one.

With a handful of small, low-effort tweaks, most users can push their Oura Ring 4 much closer to the top end of its battery range, and sometimes beyond it.

1. Turn off SpO₂ if you don’t actually use it

Blood-oxygen tracking sounds essential, but for most healthy users, it rarely changes behaviour (as I mentioned in this article). Continuous SpO₂ monitoring is, however, one of the most power-hungry features on the Oura Ring 4 and almost all other wearables. Limiting it to sleep only, or switching it off completely, can reclaim a noticeable chunk of battery life without affecting your core sleep, readiness or activity insights.

2. Sync less often

Every time you open the Oura app, the ring activates Bluetooth and starts transferring data. Doing this repeatedly throughout the day drains the battery. The app also communicates with the ring in the background, as long as the app is open and the ring is near the phone. Letting the ring store data and sync once or twice daily instead will still get the same information, just with less background power loss.

3. Use Airplane Mode when you don’t need syncing

Contrary to popular belief, Airplane Mode on the Oura Ring doesn’t stop health and fitness tracking. Instead, it pauses Bluetooth, thereby conserving battery life. Turning it on overnight, during long workdays or while travelling lets the ring focus on recording data. Even a few hours per day in Airplane Mode can extend battery life far more than you expect.

4. Finish firmware updates in one go

Oura often send updates to its wearables to introduce new features or optimise performance. Interrupted updates can cause repeated background retries, which quickly eat into battery life. When an update appears, keep your phone close, your connection stable and let it complete fully. One clean update is far kinder to your battery than several failed attempts running in the background.

5. Don’t let the battery drop too low

Tiny batteries don’t enjoy deep discharges. Charging when the ring reaches around 20–30% helps preserve long-term battery health and keeps daily performance more consistent. Short, regular top-ups are better than waiting until the ring is almost empty. Using the charging case could help keep the battery percentage high throughout the week.

6. Clean the sensors regularly

This is a less obvious way to save battery, and it's important for more than one reason. Sweat, lotion, and dirt interfere with the optical sensors, forcing the ring to work harder to produce clean readings. A quick rinse and dry every few days improves accuracy and reduces wasted power. It’s one of the simplest ways to protect both data quality and battery life. Plus, keeping your ring clean can also ensure you don't introduce dirt/germs onto foor you're holding with the same hand you grab the seat on the tube.

7. Put it in Airplane Mode when you’re not wearing it

I already mentioned Airplane Mode, and there is another reason why it should be turned on. If the ring is off your finger for a day or two, it still searches for a phone connection unless this mode is enabled. Switching it on before storing the ring prevents unnecessary background drain.