When your AirPods are ready to pair, they will continuously flash a white light to indicate that. When you see that white light flashing, you can take the device near your iPhone to connect it and route your audio through to it, but what if your AirPods aren’t flashing white?
There are several reasons your AirPods may not be flashing the white light and we can’t be sure what it is in your specific scenario. However, one thing we can be sure of is that the AirPods flashing white light is a problem that will prevent the earbuds from working properly.
In this article, I’ll show you what to do when your AirPods aren’t flashing white. First, you’ll learn why that is the case, before seeing a couple of tips to help you solve the issue completely. Without further ado, let’s jump in.
Why is My AirPods Not Flashing White?
When you open your AirPods case, it should start flashing white light to let you know it’s ready to pair with nearby devices. If this white light doesn’t appear, the AirPods is almost certainly not working, making it a problem; but why is your AirPods not flashing white?
The most common reason this issue may occur is a completely flat battery. If your AirPods’ charging case has an empty battery, the wireless earbuds will be unable to connect to your iPhone, making it useless to flash the light.
Also, the problem could be an issue with the case’s hinge mechanism, which could fool your AirPods into thinking they’re closed, when in fact, they’re open. Since a connection can only occur when the device is open, you can easily understand why such a problem could actively prevent you from using your AirPods properly.
Another reason the white light may not be flashing on your AirPods is that either of the ears is unable to charge. This problem is usually from the charging pins being unable to make contact with the bottom of the AirPods, where the receiving pins are to initiate charging.
In the following section, you’ll learn the solution to a pair of AirPods not flashing white when in their charging case. Since there are a fair bit of possible reasons why yours could have the issue, you should expect to see a big diversity in the offered solutions.
How to Fix AirPods Not Flashing White?
When your AirPods isn’t flashing the expected white light, you can try a couple of fixes to rectify the issue. The solution that will work for you depends on what went wrong with the AirPods in the first place, and as the preceding section has proven, it could be several different things.
Here are a couple of fixes to try if your AirPods isn’t flashing white when you try to connect it to your iPhone.
- Charge the AirPods
As explained in the preceding section, the most common reason why your AirPods may not be flashing white is that it’s not sufficiently charged. You can charge the AirPods as well as the charging case for a couple of minutes before trying to pair it with your iPhone to see what that changes.
To charge your AirPods, insert each of the ears into the charging case, close the charging case, and plug it into the nearest charging outlet using the available charging port. Wait for a couple of minutes for the charging case to charge sufficiently, then leave the AirPods (in their charging case) for another 15 minutes to charge them.
After doing these, open the AirPods case and hold it near your iPhone to see if anything changes. If anything doesn’t change, that could mean your AirPods aren’t charging, even when you plug them into a power supply outlet.
- Clean the charging case
If your AirPods aren’t charging even after enclosing within the charging case, you may want to consider cleaning the charging case. The case has a couple of pins that the earbuds make contact with to charge them, and excessive dirt to those pins will prevent your AirPods from charging.
To clean the case, find something long enough to reach the bottom of the case, but with a soft tip. Q-tips should work fine, but you can use anything similar to that to clean the case. Also, you should consider cleaning it gently to avoid any damage, especially if you’re using a material that could cause damage.
- Clean the bottom of your AirPods
If you’re following carefully, you should notice that the charging pins in your charging case make contact with a receiver at the bottom of your AirPods to charge the earbuds. So, when charging the device’s charging case, you shouldn’t forget to clean the bottom of the AirPods to be sure.
The bottom of the AirPods is more accessible than the pins in the charging case, so you don’t need q-tips to clean them. Even a hard blow of air from the mouth should be sufficient to clean the charging receivers on your AirPods.
- Reset the AirPods
If you’ve tried every solution from this article, but the problem doesn’t seem to be connected to charging, you may want to consider resetting your AirPods. Resetting the AirPods can help solve a host of problems, particularly software issues preventing it from functioning properly.
To reset your AirPods, press and hold on to the button on the device until you see the light changing to different colors. That process should take around 30 seconds; wait until it’s complete and try to connect your AirPods to your iPhone again. This time, it should work flawlessly.
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Conclusion
As you can already tell, you cannot connect your AirPods to your iPhone if the charging case isn’t flashing white light. The entire point of this article is to diagnose why your iPhone isn’t flashing the light and find workarounds for it.
As the article recommends, you should first try to confirm if the device is charging correctly. If that doesn’t seem to be the case, resetting your AirPods should be all that’s needed to fix any issues.