Charge your AirPods to 100% every time with this hidden setting

You can charge your AirPods to 100% and get more battery life out of them by turning off the default setting that limits them to 80%. A charge limit can help preserve the battery of your AirPods and extend their life. But this comes at the expense of more frequent charging every day. And if you find yourself in a situation where you need extra battery life, this tip will let you unlock it — for a day or forever.

If you want to squeeze the most battery life out of your AirPods and don’t mind upgrading every few years, here’s how to change the settings. Continue reading or watch our quick video.

How to charge your AirPods to 100% instead of 80%

Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries have been the standard for personal electronics for the past 25 years or so. Compared to older nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, lithium-ion batteries have a much higher energy density, longer life, faster charging speed, and more consistent power output.

But lithium-ion batteries continue to degrade over time. After a thousand cycles (full discharge and full charge), the battery can only retain 80% of its original capacity. And after that point, performance can drop off rapidly.

This is why just charging your devices to 80% can improve their lifespan. The sweet spot for battery is between 20% and 80%. Letting the battery drain completely or charging it up to 100% will stress it even more.

Still, shorter battery life can be a problem if you’re a heavy AirPods user or on a long trip. Fortunately, changing the settings is easy.

Contents: How to charge AirPods to 100% instead of 80%

1. Temporarily charge your AirPods to 100%
2. Change the charging settings of your AirPods
3. Trade-off: Battery life vs. battery life
4. More tips for AirPods

Temporarily charge your AirPods to 100%

You don’t need to permanently switch off optimized charging. If your AirPods currently have the optimized charge limit default setting enabled, you may see a pop-up screen with Fully charge now when opening the AirPods case. Tap this to charge your AirPods to 100% in one go, temporarily ignoring the limit.

This is ideal if you don’t want to endlessly turn off battery saver settings.

Change your AirPods charging settings

If you want your AirPods to always charge to 100% instead of 80%, you can change the setting when you connect the headphones to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. (Strangely, the charging settings cannot be changed from the Vision Pro.)

Open after connecting Settings app. Your AirPods should appear at the top. (On a Mac, it’s at the bottom of the sidebar.) Then scroll down to Battery, tap it and then tap Disable Optimized fee limit. When you turn this setting off, Apple gives you a choice:

• You can Turn off until tomorrowwhich cancels the 80% limit for the next day. This is useful if you have a long journey ahead of you but don’t want the feature to be turned off forever.
• Turn off disables the optimized charge limit until you turn it back on yourself. Your AirPods will charge to 100% every time you put them on the charger long enough.
• Cancel will leave the 80% limit in place.

Trade-off: Battery life vs. battery life

Charging your AirPods and their case to 100% will give you a few extra hours of battery life, but may come at the expense of longevity. Still, if you wear the headphones for long periods of time, this trade-off may be worth it.

If you want to always have the latest models and upgrade to new AirPods every now and then, you probably don’t care about maximizing their lifespan.

Just make sure you don’t drop them too much either. A hard fall can damage the battery cells. This is especially noticeable on devices with small batteries, such as those in the AirPods and their charging case.

More tips for AirPods