Stacie’s AirPods Pro 3 went missing several days ago. She lost them while changing clothes, which narrowed things down to roughly the entire house. Find My turned up nothing. We looked everywhere.
They turned up today in the dryer, in among the clean clothes. Which means they went through a full hot wash and then a full dry cycle.
We put them in the case, charged them, and they work. All of it. No water in the mesh, no dead channel, no distortion.
Here is why that is genuinely surprising rather than just lucky. AirPods Pro 3 are rated IP57, which means one meter of fresh water for up to thirty minutes. Apple is explicit that this does not extend to swimming or even showering.
A wash cycle is not that test. It is hot, which expands and contracts the seals. It has detergent in it, and detergent is a surfactant, which is a chemical whose entire job is to lower the surface tension of water so it can creep into places plain water cannot. Then add half an hour of mechanical agitation. Then, once all that is done, put the whole thing in a heated drum and tumble it against a steel wall for another forty minutes.
Not one step of that is covered by the rating. The tumble dryer may honestly have been the saving grace, since it is the only part of the sequence that was actively trying to dry them out.
It also explains Find My. A dead battery inside a sealed steel drum is about the most effective Faraday cage in the average house.
This is not a recommendation. But it is a hell of a result.
\o/
Lazarus