Check out all the ways to view the current battery percentage of Bluetooth accessories connected to your iPhone or iPad.
You can view the remaining battery charge of accessories like your AirPods and Beats headphones, Apple Watch, wireless mice, keyboards and other Bluetooth devices connected to your iPhone or iPad in ways more than one.
Use Apple’s Batteries widget
The Batteries widget is the best place to keep track of the current battery charge levels of your connected accessories, including non-Apple ones. You can place one or more Batteries widgets to your Home Screen, Lock Screen and Today View.
On the Home Screen
You can add a Batteries widget like you would place any widget on your Home Screen. You can also configure the widget to display the remaining battery percentage of your iPhone/iPad or a specific accessory connected to the device.
In your Today View
Today View, the leftmost page on the Lock and Home Screens and in the Notification Center, is a dedicated place to show only your favorite widgets in an endlessly scrolling format. Add a Batteries widget to your Today View so you have one more place to view the battery percentage of your Bluetooth devices.
On the Lock Screen
Adding a Batteries widget to your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen will enable you to view the remaining battery charge of your wireless accessories without unlocking your device. You can also customize the Batteries widget to display the battery level for a specific Bluetooth device connected to your iPhone or iPad.
Not all third-party accessories support battery reporting via Bluetooth; such devices won’t even show up in the Batteries widget.
In the Settings app
You can view the remaining battery charge of your AirPods, some Beats headphones, and certain other accessories in the Settings app. Connect your wireless buds or similar accessory to your iPhone, open the built-in Settings app and tap their name near the top. The current battery charge for each earbud and the charging case should be displayed on the next screen.
In the Control Center
Swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen to access the Control Center on iPhones with Face ID. On older models equipped with a Home button, swipe up from the bottom edge of the display. Here are the ways the Control Center lets you keep tabs on the battery level of Bluetooth accessories.
The Now Playing control
With AirPods connected to your iPhone, open the Control Center and hit the tiny headphone icon in the top-right corner of the Now Playing control. The control will expand to show you the remaining battery charge of your AirPods.
Next to the headphone icon
Wireless headphones from some manufacturers also show a tiny vertical battery gauge next to the small headphone icon near the top-right corner of the Control Center. While the vertical bar doesn’t display percentages, at least it gives you a rough visual estimate of the remaining charge.
On the Now Playing controls
You can tap the speaker icon on the Now Playing screen in the built-in Music app to view the battery percentage for the connected audio device.
This also works the Lock Screen.
Ask Siri
You can ask the Siri assistant on your iPhone or iPad to read you the current battery percentage of a connected Bluetooth device.
On the AirPods setup card
iOS supports quickly setting up certain devices like AirPods by bringing them close to your iPhone, which brings up a setup card. Once paired, you can simply open your AirPods or Beats case (or connect your Apple Pencil) near your iPhone to bring up a card displaying battery percentages for each earbud and the charging case. This may also work for some non-Apple wireless earbuds.
In official or third-party apps
Some Bluetooth headphones only display the remaining battery charge in a dedicated app. I recently purchased a pair of wireless buds that only support battery reporting via the Batteries widget for the earbuds. I have to use the manufacturer’s official app to view the battery charge for the case. If you’re in the same boat, check whether there’s official app available for your accessory in the App Store, so you can use it to view the battery percentage.
Poorly engineered accessories may not report their battery charge level correctly or at all. For instance, another pair of Bluetooth earbuds that I own only display battery charge for each earbud in the official app.
That’s not a biggie, but the battery charge for the charging case is not displayed anywhere, not even in the official app! The only way to decipher this information is by looking at the status indicator light on the case.
In addition to the above methods, general third-party apps like Battery Life can show you battery charge levels for your connected Bluetooth devices.
Are there other ways to view battery charge of Bluetooth accessories on iPhone and iPad? If you know of any we haven’t mentioned in this tutorial, please share them with fellow readers by posting in the comments down below.
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