Free MagSafe Battery Pack Firmware Update Boosts Your Charging Speeds
Credit: Rameez Remy / Kamil SToggle Dark Mode
It may surprise you to know that Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack actually includes upgradeable firmware, but it does — and Apple has just released an update that boosts the MagSafe Battery Pack’s charging speeds.
While not everyone is a fan of Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack, it offers several advantages over other magnetically-attached packs that make it a pretty compelling choice.
For one thing, you get much tighter integration with the iPhone. This lets you see the battery pack’s power level and charging status directly in the iOS Battery widget, but it goes beyond that.
Unlike most battery packs, iOS knows when it’s using the MagSafe Battery Pack and will conserve power accordingly.
The MagSafe Battery Pack also doubles as a MagSafe charger, allowing you to get a full 15W MagSafe charge when plugged into an appropriate USB-C power brick. However, those speeds were limited to 5W charging when operating as a battery.
That’s more than sufficient to keep your iPhone running if you simply leave the battery pack attached, but it’s not great if you’re hoping to use the pack to charge up your main iPhone battery quickly.
Apple clearly agrees that it can do better. Now it’s released a firmware update that pushes the MagSafe Battery Pack’s standalone charging speeds up to 7.5W — the same as the iPhone can draw from any Qi-compatible charger.
According to Apple’s support document on How to use your MagSafe Battery Pack, which was updated today, you can now “get 7.5W charging on the go” by updating your battery pack to the latest firmware.
The latest firmware available today is 2.7. By comparison, the MagSafe Battery Pack shipped with version 2.0, followed by a more uneventful 2.5 update in December. Here’s how to check which firmware version is on your MagSafe Battery Pack:
- Connect the MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap General.
- Tap About.
- Scroll down and tap MagSafe Battery Pack. This should appear at the bottom of the same block that includes your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth addresses whenever the battery pack is connected.
- Note the number beside “Firmware Version.”
Unfortunately, like AirPods, there’s no way to force the firmware update to go through. Apple says it should happen automatically after you attach your battery pack to your iPhone, but it can also take about a week to happen.
However, Apple also notes that you can update your MagSafe Battery Pack firmware using your Mac or iPad. Several users have reported this is a much faster way to get the new firmware.
Simply plug a Lightning to USB-C cable into the MagSafe Battery Pack and a free USB-C port on your Mac or iPad. Apple says that the firmware update should take about five minutes once you do this.
You can even check the firmware version from your Mac by opening up the System Information app and checking under USB devices. Here’s how:
- Click on the Apple logo (?) in the top-left corner of your Mac’s screen.
- Click About This Mac.
- Click the System Report button from the window that appears.
- In the next window, click USB on the left side, under the Hardware section.
- Scroll through your USB devices in the main panel to look for “MagSafe Battery Pack” and click on it.
- Note the firmware version in the “Version” field.
Although this won’t show the firmware update status in real-time, you can press CMD-R or select File > Refresh Information to update the view to see if the new version number has appeared.
It’s not necessary to also have your iPhone connected to the MagSafe Battery Pack for the update to complete, as it’s installed over the Lightning port from your Mac or iPad rather than via the MagSafe connection to your iPhone. However, we’ve seen some reports that it seems to happen faster if both the iPhone and the Mac/iPad are connected simultaneously.
