This viral iPhone 12 MagSafe battery hack has us wishing we'd thought of it

By Stephen Warwick
published

Parker Battery
Parker Battery (Image credit: Parker Ortolani)

What you need to know

  • Apple's new MagSafe battery pack is now available for iPhone 12.
  • One user has discovered a wild hack using Apple's existing iPhone dock.
  • It can be used to turn one into a magnetic charging stand for your iPhone.

If you've got an iPhone 12 and Apple's new MagSafe battery pack then you don't want to miss out on this awesome hack to turn it into a magnetic iPhone charging stand.

The setup was shared by Parker Ortolani on Twitter, who noted "You can turn the MagSafe battery into a magnetic iPhone stand/dock if you plug it into the lightning dock!"

As you can see from the photos, it involves placing your MagSafe battery pack on an iPhone charging dock, the one sold by Apple is pictured but if it fits there's no reason a third-party option wouldn't work either. With the battery pack in situ you can place your iPhone 12 on the dock magnetically, removing it at will thanks to the MagSafe technology on the iPhone.

This works because the iPhone 12 can be charged through the battery pack using a Lightning cable and passthrough. The new battery pack also supports reverse charging, because it can be charged from your iPhone if your iPhone is plugged in, just put your cable in the phone and not the battery pack. From Apple:

If both your iPhone and MagSafe Battery Pack need to be charged, you can charge them at the same time. Attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone and then plug the MagSafe Battery Pack into a power adapter. Using a 20W or higher power adapter, the MagSafe Battery Pack can charge your iPhone with up to 15W of charging power. You can also charge both if you attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone, then plug your iPhone into a power source. You might want to charge this way if you need to connect your iPhone to another device while charging, like if you're using wired CarPlay or transferring photos to a Mac.

Of course, this is quite an expensive solution for a charging stand if you don't own these products already, but still a neat trick. Wish I'd thought of that.

Stephen Warwick
Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design.

Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9

1 Comment
  • Two things about this article: 1. Someone at iMore is killing these articles with clickbait BuzzFeed titling schemes 2. Anyone who has used the Lightning Dock knows that its connector can easily start bending over time unless someone is careful with how they dock/undock their iPhone. Putting a MagSafe battery on it and then pulling your iPhone off of it can easily make the bending issue much worse. It doesn’t seem like iMore did any testing of this before carelessly pushing this article out to their readers.