How to know if apple pen is charging

One common reason an Apple Pencil 2nd Generation stops working normally is that it ran out of battery. If you have your iPad on hand, you should be able to charge your Apple Pencil without any extra equipment.

1. Identify the side of your iPad that features volume buttons.
2. Attach your Apple Pencil 2nd Generation to this side of your iPad magnetically.
3. When you connect your Apple Pencil to your iPad, your iPad should briefly display the Apple Pencil's charging status.

Pro Tips

• If your iPad does not show your Apple Pencil's battery life when you connect your devices, your Apple Pencil might not charge. If this occurs, check that Bluetooth is enabled on your iPad.
• Since the Apple Pencil 2nd Generation is a Bluetooth device, it requires a Bluetooth connection to charge wirelessly from your iPad.

How do you know when your Apple Pencil is charged? Or even yet, how do you know what the battery level of your Apple Pencil is?

Even though the Apple Pencil 1st generation and 2nd generation lack a battery status indicator to tell you how much charge you have left, there are ways to learn how much battery life is still there in the device.

This quick tutorial shows you how to check your Apple Pencil’s battery status. We will detail methods for both Apple Pencil 1 and Apple Pencil 2.

Here are a few ways to know the battery percentage of your Apple Pencil on your iPad.

Use the Battery widget

The best way to easily check the battery level of your Apple Pencil is to enable the Batteries widget on your iPad. This method works for the 1st and 2nd-generation Apple Pencils.

On iPadOS 15

1. Tap and hold anywhere on your Home Screen until the icons get into wiggle mode.
2. Tap the plus sign on the top left.
3. Select the Batteries widget.
4. Choose the size you want and tap Add Widget.

When the widget appears on your Home Screen, you can drag it wherever you’d like.

For more:

• How to use widgets on your iPad Home Screen
• How to add and pin widgets to your iPad Home Screen

On iPadOS 13

1. Access the Today View on your device by swiping right on the first Home Screen.
2. Scroll down to the bottom and tap the Edit button.
3. You shall now see a list of available widgets on your device. Tap the plus sign next to Batteries to enable the widget. You can optionally reorder the widgets on this screen or add the Batteries widget to the pinned widgets.
4. Tap Done to finish.

From now on, you can easily see how much battery your Apple Pencil has right within the Today View. Simply swipe and see at a glance how much juice both your iPad Pro and Apple Pencil have left.

Connect your Apple Pencil to your iPad

While this method only works for the second-generation Apple Pencil, it is one of the fastest ways to see the battery status of your stylus.

Attach your Apple Pencil to your iPad using Smart Connector, the magnetic connector on the side of your iPad. You should immediately see the battery life displayed at the top of the screen.

Use the Settings app

While not as practical and convenient as the two methods described above, there is one more way to know how much battery is left in your Apple Pencil.

Open the Settings app on your iPad, and scroll down to the Apple Pencil section. The battery level will be displayed on the right.

How to fix iPad not showing Apple Pencil battery

If you do not see the battery indicator:

• Make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your iPad.
• Wait a few seconds.
• Detach and reattach the Apple Pencil to the Smart Connector.
• Put your Apple Pencil to charge. If the battery is entirely depleted, it can take a couple of minutes to charge and then show the battery percentage.

Depending on whether you have the Apple Pencil 1 or 2, there are different ways to gauge the battery percentage of the device. Hopefully, at least one of the methods described above will work for you.

Check out next:

• How to fix Apple Pencil (1st and 2nd gen) not charging
• When and how to replace your Apple Pencil tip
• How to see AirPods battery % on any Apple and non-Apple device

Does Apple Pencil light up when charging?

How long does it take for an Apple Pencil to charge?

Why is the Apple Pencil not charging?

How does the Apple Pencil charge?