Many readers have been pointing me to TikTok videos showing hot glue being used to clean iPhones, AirPods, and other devices. All the videos follow the same pattern — a filthy device and the ports are packed with detritus and schmoo, hot glue is then squirted into the ports, left to harden, and eventually removed. Here’s an example of such a video.
The idea is that glue removes all the dirt and the job is done.
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Let me lay down a few reasons for why this is wrong.
First, hot glue is, as the name suggests, hot. Regular hot glue is around 350°F, but you can get low-melt stuff that is liquid at around 200 to 250°F and high-temperature stuff that melts at over 400°F. These temperatures are high enough to damage rubber seals, gaskets, plastics, and overall compromise the water and dustproofing of a device.
That’s what you’re squirting the hot glue into. And remember a lot of the dirt you’re trying to remove — lint, skin debris, and ear wax — melts or burns in the heat of the glue. Melting stuff drives it deeper into the device while burning lint can cause damage.
Then there’s the mechanical stress of both the glue cooling — shrinkage force — and the force of yanking the dried, well-adhered glue out of ports and holes.
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Then there’s the glue residue. Even the video showing the AirPods being cleaned clearly shows excess glue stuck onto the grill of the AirPod’s speaker. Furthermore, this will negatively impact the audio quality of the AirPods. The only way to remove this sort of residue would be to use a little isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab.
Finally, it’s not an effective way of removing dirt. Some surface dirt will stick to the hot glue, but it also leaves a lot behind. So you can’t help but notice how ineffective this is in the videos telling you to do this.
Most of the dirt, along with remnants of hot glue, remain.
Converto_/TikTok
So, if hot glue isn’t the answer to cleaning your dirty gadgets, what is?
Honestly, you could just not worry about it. I’ve had devices that have had zero cleaning and still work after many years of use.
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What I do with my iPhone every time I take it out of the case is give it a wipe with a lens cleaning wipe or microfiber cloth. That gets rid of the worst of the dirt and grime.
If you want an in-depth cleaning, or you’ve got some dirt jammed into a port or speaker grill that’s causing an issue, my method is to use a cotton swab lightly dipped — not soaked, too much liquid can cause problems — in isopropyl alcohol to remove the surface dirt and loosen the dirt that’s deeper down. Then, proceed to suck it out of the port of the grill using an ear wax removal vacuum.
This does a great job of pulling the stuck-on dirt and drawing up and removing any remaining isopropyl alcohol used for the cleaning.
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You don’t need to do this often, but when you do, this is the best, and safest method I’ve come across because it does a good job of cleaning earbuds, speaker grills, and charge ports.