iPhone or iPad Not Charging Reliably? Clean Its Lightning Port with a Toothpick

If you’re plugging your iPhone in regularly but getting low-battery warnings when you shouldn’t, consider the possibility that something is preventing your iPhone from charging successfully while plugged in. If there’s no lightning bolt badge on the battery icon when the iPhone is plugged in, that’s a sure sign that no power is reaching the device. Another hint that failures could be happening intermittently would be a lack of charging in the Last Charge Level graph in the Settings app > Battery when you know the iPhone was plugged in.

The Battery section of your Settings app may give you some insight. The lightning bolt in the middle of the graph shows when I connected to a Lightning cable. You may notice that my iPhone held off charging to 100% for several hours. That’s an iOS 13 feature to preserve battery health. The thin green bars that extend all the way to the top of the graph indicate when I was connected to power. You’ll notice that the thin green bars toward the left show no lightning bolt, which is because I was charging by a wireless charging pad.

If you’ve already tested the obvious things like making sure the outlet works, or trying a different power adapter and Lightning cable, perhaps it’s the port itself to blame. Luckily, the solution is often easy. Take a wooden (not metal) toothpick and gently poke around inside the iPhone’s Lightning port for pocket fuzz. You’d be amazed how much crud can end up in there. If cleaning doesn’t solve the problem you may need to contact Apple Support. It very well may require a repair.

‎Apple Support
‎Apple Support
Developer: Apple
Price: Free

(Featured image by Adam Engst)