Can you shower with AirPods?

If you’re a music junkie or just can’t stand to miss out on a broadcast, you may have wondered to yourself if you can just keep using your Apple AirPods in the shower to not miss out. But is it foolish? Should you rethink your brilliant plan?

The answer, as usual, lies in what happens when your plans fail.

Are AirPods waterproof?

AirPods of any kind are not waterproof. So if your plan is to put them in water’s way, be ready for the very likely possibility that you’ll damage them somehow. Apple AirPods and AirPods Pro of the latest generation have what’s called an ingress protection rating of IPX4. That may just look like a jumble of letters and numbers, but it’s not. The 4 at the end there tells us that the products are able to take the occasional splash, but not from a constant jet of water — you know, just like what a showerhead produces.

As you can see from the table above, the ingress protection rating for water is actually only a step below where we’d reconsider telling you that AirPods in the shower wasn’t a foolish idea. However, that’s not the reality of the situation. This rating only applies to the product when it’s new, and water-resistant gaskets and sealing degrade over time. It’s entirely possible for an older product to get damaged by water when its rating says it shouldn’t.

Can you shower with AirPods?

While it’s within the product’s parameters to be able to be used while you’re physically in the shower stall, Apple AirPods and Apple AirPods Pro aren’t designed to withstand water. Not only do these earphones have very little in the way of protection against the elements, but these products do not bear an ingress protection rating sufficient enough (IPX4) to withstand constant streams of water. Apple’s support page is extremely clear about this.

If you were to shower with the AirPods, it would have to be done in such a way that you could guarantee no water came into contact with them. This is a much more difficult thing than it sounds, because water also can condense onto cooler pieces of material after getting heated and being absorbed into the air — ever notice your plumbing showing excessive condensation? The same thing can happen to AirPods in the right environment, so it’s not always a guarantee they will be safe even if they don’t get wet from a splash of water.

Despite multiple Reddit threads saying otherwise, subjecting products like the AirPods Pro to casual abuse will void your warranty nine times out of ten. So if you do take these sensitive not-waterproof things into the shower with you, not only are you risking their breakage, but an inability to recover any part of what you paid for them. Even if you’ve tried using your AirPods in the shower before without an incident, eventually your luck will run out.

Just don’t risk it. The cost of new AirPods at full price just isn’t worth using them in the shower for an indeterminate amount of time.

Are there things you can do to use AirPods in the shower?

There are a number of things you can do in order to prevent water from getting into your AirPods. But as we can’t predict how they’ll affect the relative humidity within the earphones themselves, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that the only time you should ever wear your AirPods in the shower is if most of your body isn’t in there — or you can guarantee that your earphones will not come into contact with water.

A shower cap

The obvious solution seems like it would be a shower cap: as it prevents direct contact with water to your head, and if it can be pulled over your ears you could potentially prevent direct contact with water. However, it’s not perfect, and thin plastic has a fun habit of being really easy to tear. Additionally, shower caps often work like a sauna suit: if the shower is hot enough to get you to sweat, the humidity within the cap could absolutely find its way into your AirPods and wreak some havoc.

Aiming the shower lower

Another solution that pops up in threads online is to simply aim the shower lower. In theory this should work, but not all showerheads create a perfect laminar flow of water. In fact, very few do, unless you’re using a garden hose. Splashes and errant droplets flung every which way do fall under the IPX4 use case, but not as a constant thing — eventually your luck will run out if there’s enough water.

Taking a bath instead

The last major solution proffered by online AirPods-bathers is to take a bath instead of a shower. On its face the act seems reasonable, but if you’re trying to get out of the door in the morning this is a very inefficient way of going about things. There are also a number of pitfalls here even worse than taking a shower. For example, if a single earbud pops out, instead of hitting a bathmat that isn’t submerged under a couple feet of water: that earbud is getting submerged in water until you can find it.

What you should do instead

Sure, it’s not actually using AirPods in the shower, but the best way to listen to music in the shower is to use something made for that purpose, like a speaker. There are plenty of shower-proof speakers on the market that will make your washroom sound like a concert hall, so go grab one of those before you toss your AirPods — figuratively or literally — down the drain. AirPods aren’t meant to be blasted with water, so don’t do that. Plan for your environment.

If you’re already willing to break your AirPods in order to listen to music, chances are good that you may have a few extra bucks lying about — which is good, because buying a cheaper speaker is less expensive than having to replace your AirPods and deal with the shower situation. Be sure to take a look at waterproof speakers, as they can be used pretty much anywhere in any condition.