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We hate to add another chore to your list of tasks, but it turns out that if you use in-ear earbuds like Apple AirPods, you should be cleaning them on the regular. It’s not just a matter of general hygiene, but also to help ensure that your earbuds function at full capacity and last as long as possible.
“Earbuds can get really gunky really quickly, with earwax and goo and all kinds of dust. When that happens, the gunk can actually stick to the speaker,” said Ahmed Ashour, an IT professional and educator who previously worked at Apple’s Genius Bar. “It will literally block certain frequencies from the sound in the headphone, so you will get a muffled sound, you’re going to lose a lot of bass, you will lose a lot of mid and lower tones and it might sound muddy.”
The antidote to dusty, earwax-clogged earbuds? Regular cleaning. “The real trick is to [clean your earbuds] consistently, to not let it build up an absolutely disgusting mess,” said Ashour. Otherwise, “Once earwax gets inside your AirPods [or other earbuds], there’s really not much a … technician can do.”
Based on Ashour’s guidelines and our readers’ and reviewers’ enthusiasm for it, we recommend this $8 earbud cleaning kit, which sports over 17,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. The kit includes a metal tip to efficiently clean nooks and crannies, a fine nylon brush to gently clean the swath of earbuds’ speakers and microphones, plus a dense cylindrical sponge to clean the speaker and the inside of the AirPods’ wireless charging case. The kit is super compact and portable, with its three parts fitting inside the kit’s pen design, so you can easily toss it into your bag and clean your buds wherever you are. It comes in black and white.
To best clean your earbuds, you should be mindful of the material you’re using; that’s why using a specialized cleaning kit can be especially useful. “It’s actually not great to use [paper] tissue, because tissues leave tiny little fibers on the surface of silicone,” Ashour told HuffPost. “If you’ve tried to clean anything rubber or silicone with a tissue, like a TV screen, you’ll notice that when you wipe it, there are all these little white fibers that are left, so that’s that’s the main reason why you don’t want to use tissue or toilet paper when you’re trying to clean electronics.”
Ashour recommended first using a brush, and then going in with the pointy metal tip. “Brushes are great because they have teeth, so they can grab stuff. Then you can use the pointy tip to pick up the last bits of earwax and gunk that didn’t get caught,” Ashour said. Just remember to do so gently: “You don’t want to be too rough when you scrub the mesh.”
As for the metal tip in the Hagibis kit: “The benefit of a specially designed tool that’s metal, is that it wouldn’t leave any residue at all,” Ashour explained. “Even with Q-tips, you can get little strands of cotton stuck to the silicone. With a specialized tool, it’ll be faster to clean and it’s less likely you’re going to be leaving cotton fibers or something on the AirPod and then putting it back in your ear.”
Another benefit of the Hagibis kit is the flocking sponge designed to deep clean the AirPod case, which doubles as a wireless charger. “You want to clean the case where the AirPods rest, because you’ll get earwax gunk on there too,” said Ashour.
Pick up your own Hagibis earbud cleaning kit at Amazon now, or take a look at what Amazon reviewers have to say about it:
“This little tool is amazing! My son uses his AirPods for hours everyday and I was amazed at how much ear wax and dirt we were able to clean out of his AirPods without damaging them. He said he could actually hear better out of them now! It is also able to get into the charging case and clean that out as well. Highly recommend this product!” — Fofie’s Deals and Steals
“This cleaner is EVERYTHING!! This is actually my 3rd purchase bc my friends keep taking it!!! It cleans all the nooks & crannies in my airpods as well as my iphone!!! I DEFINITELY recommend!!!” — HOTCHOCOLATE872
“I keep this with all my electronics and find myself using it a lot. It has a pick that is a perfect size for all the nooks and crannies in your airpods. Also the two types of brushes are super sturdy and equally soft clean them perfectly.” — Nick Erickson
“My son’s Airpods had lost the sound quality, and he wanted to buy new ones. This cleaning kit got them working again and saved me from having to replace them.” — Teresa Bonnema
“I didn’t know I needed this product until I saw it on TikTok and it’s been amazing. My AirPods and case get kind of… dingy and this tool is so helpful!” — Sarah