In this article I’ll show you the way to clean your Apple airpods this is going to work for the air pods the first generation the second generation and probably even the third generation when they come out either later this year or in 2020 so of course my second generation air pods here are still fairly new I’ve only used them for about a month now and they don’t have as much build-up but they don’t need cleaning but the original air pods here I’ve owned since day one and I’ve been using them pretty much every day for over two years and actually just a couple weeks before I picked up the air pods second generation earlier this year I did notice that the left air pod in my first generation air pods here was noticeably louder than the right air pod and there was also a lack of bass and I thought that it was just aged catching up to him I thought that they were you know starting to wear down which is kind of soon for an apple product but still I tried out listening to different things I tried cleaning out my ears themselves but still I noticed that the left air pod was louder than the right you know I even went into the accessibility menu to make sure that my audio levels were even and they were but still there was low and muffled audio on the right air pod and then finally it hit me that the problem wasn’t my ears or the software or the air pods themselves it was probably just the buildup of wax and dust inside of the air pod itself and sure enough looking inside of the air pod itself and even inside the case you can see there is a lot of wax buildup and things like that I haven’t cleaned these things in about a year now I know that’s bad you should probably clean them every few months but I have been slacking on cleaning these guys and honestly a lot of people probably just try using like a microfiber to clean it but that’s really not enough so I wanted to show you the best way to clean your air pods
What I recommend you use as well is a q-tip a toothpick or a sim ejector tool either one works I would recommend a toothpick a microfiber a screen cleaner or rubbing alcohol and if you’re gonna be using rubbing alcohol I would recommend 90% or higher but you can see here I am using a screen cleaner this is actually an optic cleaner for DSLR camera so I can clean the lens anything like that works as well the rubbing alcohol you know as an alternative as well they may have just around the house alright.
So the first thing we’re going to do is take the air pods out of the case itself and we’re going to set the case to the side we’ll clean that here in a minute and now what you want to do is put some rubbing alcohol or some screen cleaner on a q-tip so this is a spray bottle so I’m just gonna spray a few sprays on one end of the q-tip and now I’m just going to rub inside the grill of the air pod right here so I’m just rubbing you can already see the wax loosening up and you can see it on the q-tip already so I’m just going to keep rubbing around the grill don’t put too much pressure because it is a mess grill you don’t want to damage anything so just keep rubbing right there maybe get this top part right here as well just rub anywhere where you see a mesh grill and you see any kind of buildup of wax or dust or anything like that and then once you’ve loosened the wax with some rubbing alcohol or some screen cleaner you want to use a toothpick or your sim eject tool to get rid of the wax so we’re just going to go around and collect all the wax from inside you can see it there on the toothpick there’s a good bit and I guess I would recommend a napkin as well for you guys to rub this wax off on and then once you’ve got most of the wax out you want to take your microfiber towel spray that with a little bit of rubbing alcohol or a screen cleaner and then go ahead and rub around all over the body of the air pod and also inside there where the mesh grille is and you should already start seeing a big difference in the cleanliness of your air pod and there you go you can see the right air pod is looking pretty much brand-new at this point you can see most of the wax is completely out there maybe a little bit up in this top grill so I’m just going to go back with a toothpick and repeat those same steps until everything is gone and if you do have some compressed air laying around or anything with air in it you can also push some air in there as well to get any kind of dust or particles out of the air pod itself as well and once you’ve finished cleaning up the air pods you want to set them face downwards you want any kind of liquid or anything that went into the air pot itself to come out so you want to put it facing downwards instead of facing upwards like this so put it down like that now we’re going to move on to the left we’re going to do the exact same thing we’re just going to rub all over the grill of the air pot itself and all around the body all the different grills all three grills and around the body here then we’ll just take our toothpick and clean around the edges and get the rest of that wax out of there after it’s been loosened up and all three of the grills go and wipe it off on our little napkin there then we’re just gonna take our microfiber and clean around everywhere on the air pod as well the body and the mess grills and then set that one facedown as well now let’s move on to the case itself you can see there is a good amount of dirt all around here even inside of here where the air pods went like the ear part of the air pods went up around here you can see there’s a lot of dirt and dust and wax a lot of different build up there we’re basically gonna do the same thing where I spray some rubbing alcohol or some screen cleaner on the q-tip go around there and we’re going to use the toothpick to go around inside of these little crevices like this then we’ll just take our microfiber and clean it off as well once we’ve rubbed around a little bit with that alcohol or a screen cleaner filled q-tip and we also went around the crevices with the toothpick you could already see a big difference in this air Pods case right here looks so much cleaner already and some of that dirt can be really stubborn so I’m just gonna go ahead and spray it a little bit with this air especially around the crevices right around here in the back you know the hinge and there you have it these guys look pretty much brand new now you don’t really see any of that dirt that you saw before especially none of that wax buildup on the air pods case itself and the air pods themselves as well you don’t really see any of that wax inside of the mesh grilles or you know any three of the mesh grilles or around the edges or anything like that they look pretty much brand new so this is a great way to clean your air pods .
If you’re having trouble hearing out of them or if they just look nasty or if you’re trying to sell them on eBay or something like this this is the way you should clean them you can have the cleanest ears in the world and use q-tips daily but wax is eventually going to get into your air pods and you should definitely clean them from time to time I really wouldn’t go more than 6 months without cleaning them now another tip I want to give you guys if you’re having trouble hearing audio out of one of your air pods if the audio is lower or muffled more than the other one thing you could do is actually suck on the air pod I’m not kidding you can literally suck in on the air pod obviously after you’ve cleaned them like I said preferably with alcohol if you are going to be putting them in your mouth and then you just take the head of the air pod itself and suck in with your mouth and I’ve read multiple people tons of people said that this solved a lot of audio issues with their air pods so if you’re still having audio issues after cleaning them definitely go ahead and suck on the head of the air pod pause and that will that will supposedly fix your audio issues I’m gonna go ahead and do a quick audio test with these air pods one and see if the audio is better with or without sucking ,so I just tested them out after cleaning and I didn’t really notice a difference so I did the sucking technique and it actually worked so I can definitely recommend that myself now so if you’re having audio issues definitely going clean your air pods first make sure that’s not you know what’s causing it and even if it is you want to clean them before you put them in your mouth and then go ahead and suck on whatever air pod is giving you audio issues so anyways guys there you have it the best way to clean your air pods and also help get the audio back in your airpod .
