Look at how clean these look! No gunk! You can get back to this by following the steps below.
When was the last time you took a look at your AirPods (or other earbuds) before jamming them in your ears? They’re pretty gross, aren’t they? You should probably clean them once a week, just to make sure they don’t collect gunk. Not only will this keep your AirPods clean and sanitary, it can actually ensure you’re always getting the best sound quality from your AirPods. That earwax and dead skin cells can block the grilles of your AirPods or headphones, and that prevents them from making sound. They’ll sound muffled, with little bass.
So, check out the steps below, and definitely try this at home.
What You’ll Need
- Q-Tips
- Alcohol
- Paper towel
- Electronics Cleaning Slime
- Toothpicks
Numbers 4 and 5 are optional, but I highly recommend them. The electronics cleaning gak/slime/goo, especially. You can buy some from Amazon here, or you can make some with borax and Elmer’s Glue.
The Process
You can watch the video above or just follow along here.
- If you want to be extra safe, allow your AirPods batteries to completely die before doing this. That will help prevent water damage. Otherwise, just be extremely cautious with step 4. Your AirPods aren’t waterproof.
- Use the toothpicks to clean out the largest pieces of earwax and dead skin cells. This is so you don’t have to get them in your electronics goo, but also so you don’t potentially press it into the grille while cleaning with Q-Tips later on.
- Use the electronics cleaning slime to press into the grille openings. Check the video above. You don’t want to press too hard, but just enough to get it to touch the grille on the inside of the indentation. You want the slime to get between the grille and pull out anything that’s stuck to it.
- Lightly saturate the end of a Q-Tip in alcohol. You don’t want this dripping. It should just barely have alcohol on it. Use this to clean the surfaces of your AirPods, avoiding the grilles. Don’t press hard, you don’t want to push alcohol into your AirPods. You could break them. Make sure you clean the sensors!
- Dry off the alcohol from the other side and make sure there’s no gunk left with the dry side of your Q-Tip.
- Let everything dry, charge your AirPods, and enjoy!