Why are my AirPods Pro only charging 80%?

Have you ever wondered why your AirPods Pro battery level almost always hovers around 80%? This is because Apple automatically enables functionality that reduces battery aging and, therefore, Drastically slows down the charging speed after your AirPods Pro battery is 80% charged. If you’re in a hurry to fully charge your AirPods Pro, there is an easy way to bypass this feature.

Why is Apple slowing down the charging speed of AirPods Pro?

Apple uses a feature called Optimized Battery Charging to improve the battery health of your AirPods Pro. This feature increases the battery life of your AirPods Pro, which means you won’t end up with unusable battery life within a year of purchasing this product. Its good. But it will also prevent the battery from charging as quickly as you want when you are away from your charger for an extended period of time. Not so good.

This feature may remind you rrecent lawsuits involving Apple battery limiting practices, butthis is not an example of Apple being bad. AirPods Pro uses lithium-ion battery technology (like pretty much all other consumer electronics) and the limitation of this technology is that the battery capacity decreases over time. There is no way to prevent these batteries from getting old, but there is manners to slow down this process. Apple’s solution is activate Optimized battery charge by default on AirPods Pro.

How to fully charge your AirPods Pro plus quick

If you are in a situation where you need to AirPods Pro fully charged quickly, try to turn off the optimized battery charge. Please note that we absolutely do not recommend disabling this feature permanently.–if you turn it off, it’s a good idea to Dactivate once your need for fast charging has passed, thus you will not unnecessarily shorten your AirPods Pro battery life.

However, if you are in a hurry and absolutely to do need to charge your AirPods Pro ASAP, here’s what you need to do:

1. Connect your AirPods Pro to your iPhone or iPad. (For most people, this involves taking your AirPods Pro out of the case and stick them in your ears; they go usually automatically connect to iPhone or iPad.)
2. On the device, go to Settings> Bluetooth.
3. Press the I button next to AirPods Pro.
4. Scroll down and turn off Optimized battery charge.
5. When you do this, you will see a pop-up window on your iPhone asking you to confirm this action. You can select Deactivate until tomorrow to temporarily disable it, which is probably a good idea for the reasons described above. Or you can live dangerously and to select Switch off to deactivate the optimized battery charge ppermanently (until you turn it back on manually).

Once your AirPods Pro have in charge of 100%, you can follow the same steps to reactivate optimized battery charging (or wait for it to turn on automatically).

Note: Tits functionality requires versions iOS 14.2 or iPadOS 14.2 Or newer. You can check if you have the required version by going to Settings> General> About and check the number next to A software version. If you have an older version of iOS or iPadOS, go to Settings> General> Software update and update to a newer version of iOS.