Chosen Solution
for a while now, I realised how my left earbuds have a really hard time connecting properly to the charging case. I only noticed after continuously picking up my aipods and find out the left one is empty. I did contact apple customer service once and they suggested to bring it to an apple repair store. The only available near me happened to be an authorised store and not an actual apple store. I did book a repair and they took it in and made me come back after 1h, only to then tell me there’s nothing they can do? They did however, clean and reset my airpods, which did not solve my problem. Now before I tried contacting apple again, and maybe try and book a repair at an actual apple store, I thought I see if anyone had the same issue and maybe has a solution. I bought mine in January, so I still have the 1 year apple warranty. Note: I also noticed how sometimes my devices show different % of charge the earbuds have left. They sometimes seem to not update frequently… not sure if that has to do with the problem, but I’ve seen people have that before.
since my airpods still had the 1 year apple warranty, i brought them to the apple store and they just gave me new ones. I never tried to pry up the contact fingers slightly because I didn’t have a tool small enough to grab them, but also because I was scared to damage and ruin the warranty. If you bought yours within the last year, just bring them to the apple store!
Clean and pry up the contact fingers very slightly, that’s it.
i had the same problem. take a toothpick, stick the thicker end of it in your case and press on the magnetic bars slightly until they move. do that to both sides and it should be working soon.
As I’m not within the 1 year warranty and all stores are closed in my area due to the pandemic, I tried rubbing a bit of nail polish remover on the contacts (found this on another site). I’m only 5 minutes in, but it seems to be charging again.
Had an issue with left pod on AirPods Pro, though that it was broken. Afterwards, I have tried to pair a left pod from another AirPods Pro with my old case — the new left pod was working fine with the old right one. Then I have switched again old left pod with new left pod and the old one was working again.
I had this problem too, I cleaned inside the port with some twisted up tissue paper, I cleaned the small copper plates at the bottom and then inserted the AirPod back inside, problem solved!
I had this issue too, though I’ve had my AirPods for longer at this point. My own diagnosis was that the metal contact inside the case (at the bottom where the stems go into the case) had corroded after years of use, so the AirPod wasn’t making solid contact to be able to charge consistently. I came up with some hacks worked for a short period of time (e.g., cleaning the port, like the previous poster mentioned, wrapping tie AirPod stem in foil to increase the electrically conductive surface area in hopes that a different part of the metal contact would connect) , but the only long-term solution I could find was to buy a replacement charging case.
