No, You Can’t Charge Your AirPods Case With Your Apple Watch Charger

On paper, this little trick should be possible. The Apple Watch uses a Qi-based charger, and your AirPod wireless charging case also supports Qi charging. Instead of plugging in your wireless charging case, you should be able to set it right on top of your Apple Watch charger to give it some juice. Right?

It makes perfect sense that you can charge the AirPods case using the Apple Watch charger, but for some reason I had never tried it. Neat. pic.twitter.com/a7qktFo7VA

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 18, 2019

Whether you’ve seen this picture, a similar picture, or have had the wacky idea enter your head that this little hack could prevent you from ever having to fuss with a cable ever again, I have a bubble to burst. This trick doesn’t work. Plenty of people have chimed in across different communities to indicate this. And, no, you can’t just put your AirPods directly on the Apple Watch charger, either.

The quirky part of this “hack,” however, is that some people still claim they can get their wireless AirPods case to charge. If true, this requires some exact positioning on your part, which means you can’t just slap the wireless charging case on your Apple Watch charger however you want and expect anything to happen:

Strangely, this morning, it’s not working anymore! ????

I’m either going crazy, or you have to place the case on a excessively precise point on the charger. ????

— That French Canadian Guy (@ThatFrenchCanad) August 19, 2019

Even then, your wireless charging case might not actually be charging:

FYI it doesn’t actually charge, it just thinks it is.

— Jacob Marshall (@heyimjacooob) August 18, 2019

And please don’t let this technological meme inspire you to do other foolish things:

I legit just had a blonde moment and tried to see if my phone would work with my Apple Watch charger lmao ????

— ɘꙅoЯ △⃒⃘ (@glamourandguns) August 18, 2019

Rather than wasting hours of your life fussing with this, I have a better idea. There are plenty of third-party wireless charging setups you can buy that make it easy to charge your iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch all at once.

They tend to range from reasonably expensive to decently expensive, but they’re the best way to consolidate your charging setup into one spot. If you’re going with some cheaper off-brand charger, make sure you’ve done your homework and read product reviews before you purchase. Better to let others report on a charger’s quality — if it even works very well at all — than to be stuck with a dud.