Will My iPad Charge When It’s Turned Off?

If you want to use an iPad, you need to charge it. 

All electronics need electricity, and Apple’s hit tablet is no exception to that rule.

But will an iPad still charge when it is turned off?

Will My iPad Charge When It’s Turned Off?

An iPad will still charge when it is turned off as long as it is connected to the charging cord. The only way to stop an iPad from charging is to unplug it. iPads still receive power from the charging cord when they are turned off. Turning the power off speeds up the charging process of an iPad.

Electricity is an interesting concept that is slightly complicated. 

However, when it comes to charging your iPad, you can easily charge it, even when it is turned off. 

More information about what happens when you turn off an iPad is below.

How does this Work?

How can an electrical product still work when it is turned off?

Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of turning it off? Well, to understand how your iPad can still charge when it is turned off, we first need to talk about how batteries work.

Batteries are fairly simple from a physics standpoint. 

Every battery has three parts: a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte. 

Cathodes and anodes are both kinds of electrodes, which is a fancy scientific word for any conductive object through which electricity enters or exits an object. 

The electrolyte is simply a substance through which it is easy for electricity to pass. 

In an iPad battery, this is probably some variation on a mix of lithium, copper, nickel, and a few other metals, as these are the materials used in most rechargeable phone batteries.

Whenever the battery is connected to an electrical system, electrons flow from the cathode to the anode through the electrolyte, producing electricity. 

This continues until either the battery is so full of debris from the chemical reactions caused by the electricity that it can no longer function, or until it’s out of electrons to move around. 

This will happen even if the device is turned off and powered down.

In a rechargeable battery, the electrons can be reset to their original position through the application of a direct electrical current to the battery.

Think of this as the chemical equivalent of winding up clockwork. 

As long as the energy is being applied to the battery, this rewinding will continue.

So, if you are applying an electrical current to your iPad’s battery, the electrons in the battery will reset to their original position, even if the iPad is turned off.

What Happens When You Turn Off An iPad

iPads are like any other electrical device, meaning that they turn on and off through the use of a switch. 

On iPads and smartphones, these switches are quite small but still present. 

Whenever you turn on the iPad, the switch moves a small piece of conductive wire into place to complete a circuit with the battery.

This causes electrons to flow, which draws the electrical energy out of the battery until either the circuit is interrupted or the battery runs out of energy.

When the power of your iPad is turned off, the switch moves that little piece of conductive material away from the circuit. 

This causes the electricity to stop flowing and halts the battery’s function. 

However, that doesn’t mean that electricity can’t flow into the battery when your iPad is off.

Does This Interrupt Charging?

The charging reaction can happen regardless of whether the battery is currently functioning or not.

A great example of this is how most handheld gaming consoles in the pre-Nintendo Switch era had a small light on them that would turn on when they were charging. 

This light used an extremely small amount of battery power to tell the system’s owner that the device was plugged in.

When the light changed color, the device was ready to use.

Non-Apple tablets and phones have a similar function that displays how much charge the battery has at any given moment during the charging process, even when the screen is turned off.

Apple products don’t show the percentage of battery life when the screen is off, as they power on automatically when they have enough power to do so. 

However, once your iPad is on, you can see the amount of battery it has and whether or not it is charging.

However, if you want to charge your iPad while it’s turned off, you can do that by telling it to turn off while it’s plugged in. 

You can also turn off the iPad before you plug it in. 

As long as the iPad is plugged into an electricity source, the reaction that winds up the battery will continue regardless of whether it’s plugged in, so it being turned off really shouldn’t change anything.

How to Take Care of a Battery

Now that you know more about batteries and how they work, let’s talk about the best way to take care of your iPad’s battery so it will last you longer.

The trick with rechargeable batteries is that every time they are recharged, the reaction damages them slightly. 

Over a period of years, this will inevitably cause the battery to hold less and less power until it finally breaks down completely. 

This will happen eventually no matter what, but with the right care and maintenance, this effect can be mitigated.

For one thing, you should avoid charging the battery to 100% or let it drain to 0%. 

Doing these things causes undue stress on the battery’s system, which causes it to degrade much faster.

You should also have your battery charge slowly whenever that’s an option. 

The faster the battery charges, the more damage the charging process will do to the battery.

You can also improve battery health by making sure that each charge lasts a long time. 

This is a small thing, but by only turning on WiFi and Bluetooth when you’re using them and by keeping your screen’s brightness low when you can double the life of each charge, which will, in turn, mean that you don’t have to charge your devices as often.