Apple’s MagSafe tech might not be particularly efficient at charging your iPhone, but those batteries are A+ hacking project gold. Thanks to Apple, there’s a standard for circular magnets and metal rings that can be bought and used in all kinds of projects. You can mix and match purpose-built MagSafe batteries, brackets, and stands with your own DIY options. Let’s dive straight into some examples. 

Battery Power

A typical MagSafe-compatible battery pack fits in the palm of your hand, carries around 10,000 mAh, and can charge either via wasteful inductive charging, or via a much better USB-C port (also used to recharge the pack’s own battery).

Our first MagSafe hack is dead simple. You just slap the pack onto the side of any magnetic metal device (anything made of iron, cobalt, nickel, or alloys thereof), plug in the USB-C, and you’re off. You just converted a wall-tethered device into a portable one.

Exhibit A: My Elektron Tonverk, a steel-bodied beast of a sampler which runs off USB-C but has no option for battery power. I stick a MagSafe battery to either the side or to its base (which sits between my knees when it’s on my lap), and run a short USB-C cable between the two. I prefer the little curly coiled cable that came with some other gadget (I lose track), and has right-angled USB-C plugs. The advantage is that it is variable in length, and never catches on anything when you move your setup.

In this example, 10,000 mAh is enough for many hours of operation. I’ve never run out of power in a single session. 

Sticky Ring

But what if your would-be portable device is made of plastic, aluminum, or one of those mystery alloys that most of the no-name gadgets from Amazon and AliExpress seem to be made of? Easy. Just head over to Amazon or AliExpress or your favorite junkvendor, and buy a pack of self-adhesive MagSafe rings. These are nothing but steel rings with a peel-and-stick layer, and will match the magnetic rings perfectly. They’re meant for adding MagSafe accessory support to older iPhones and Android phones, but they’re perfect for our purposes.

You don’t need these of course. They just keep things neat. You can stick or screw any piece of magnetic metal to anything. I have a flat piece of steel taped to the bottom of my desk in case I want to stick anything there. And check that your plastic devices don’t have a metal baseplate before buying anything else.

While we’re on the subject of buying parts, you can also buy self-adhesive MagSafe magnets. These are meant to provide mounting points for your phone around the home and car—on a kitchen wall, a dashboard, and so on. I purchased a pack of two, which conveniently came with a baggie full of stick-on metal rings. Here’s one attached to the bottom of my Retrokits RK-005 MIDI hub. This is a super-useful mod, because it lets me stick it to the device I’m using it with, or just to the steel speaker stands on my desk so it doesn’t slip around under the weight of all the plugged-in cables. 

It’s worth shopping around for parts. The MagSafe compatibility means that you can mix-and-match and they should all just work together. But you can spend $10 on a single stick-on ring, a pack of rings, or not much more for a multi-pack of magnets and metal rings. I won’t link any here, as I don’t necessarily recommend a brand, but they’re easy to find. 

But I do have one recommendation. The Rolling Square Edge Pro Core Magnetic Stand, for the high, high price of $30 on Amazon. It consists of a bunch of steel discs and adhesive circles, but the main part is a hinged bracket that connects two MagSafe devices together. The Rolling Square is designed for attaching your phone to the side of your computer monitor, to use as an extra display or to use the phone as a webcam for Zoom, but it’s also amazingly useful for other stuff. 

Here’s one of my favorite Rolling Square hacks: You stick it to the bottom of a computer keyboard, and stick your phone on the other end to make a minimal “writer deck.” 

You don’t have to use it to connect two devices together either. One neat use is as a snap-on stand for a phone or other device 

Vs. Velcro

Up until MagSafe, I was all-in on self-adhesive hook-and-loop aka Velcro. But it has plenty of disadvantages. First is that the connection wobbles, whereas magnets snap into place and stay there. 

Then, it’s much, much harder to separate the parts. MagSafe can either slide off, or you can just twist to release. Hook-and-loop needs to be yanked much harder, to the extent that it can end up pulling the adhesive side off whatever it is attached to. I used to use a staple gun to reinforce the velcro stuck under my desk for this reason. 

And Velcro needs to be attached to both surfaces, whereas a MagSafe magnet can be stuck to all kinds of things directly. Central-heating radiators, chair and table legs, car bodywork, refrigerators (fridge magnets!), shelving supports, and so on. And on. 

Velcro is still better for some things. The power strip on the bottom of my desk is fine with velcro, as I rarely remove it and bulk rolls of self-adhesive hook-and-loop are cheaper. 

VoltClips and Power Delivery

Let’s go back to my music gear example at the top of this article. What if my desktop sampler didn’t accept USB-C power? This is actually the case with most desktop synths, samplers, mixers, etc. For those, you’re going to need an adapter like iFixit’s own VoltClip. This converts USB-C power input to a 12 Volt barrel-connector output. 

There is actually a market for adapters that do exactly this. The various BirdCords from Songbird FX come with different voltages, barrel diameters, and barrel orientations (right angled vs straight), and let you power several devices from a single USB-C PD power bank, or just use your USB-C PD charger instead of bulkier power supplies. 

The key part here is the “PD,” or power delivery. This protocol lets your device and the charger negotiate the correct voltage to be supplied. A PD charger is also way better equipped to feed high-power gadgets, providing up to 100W or even 240W depending on specs. 

The catch is that you have to examine the small print. Literally. You’ll need to take a magnifying glass to read the tiny grey-on-grey list of available power levels. This is important. If the charger can only provide 5, 9, 15, or 18 Volts, then your 12-Volt VoltClip isn’t going to work. In our case, the iFixit VoltClip will drop down to 5 Volts if the right PD option isn’t available. 

VoltClip

This USB-C powered alligator clip is capable of delivering the 9-12V required to debond the iPhone 16’s new adhesive when plugged into a USB-C PD source.

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In practice, this just means that you have to be careful when buying (in my experience, Baseus is the best at consistently listing supported voltages for its battery packs on Amazon), and be aware that if something doesn’t work how you were expecting it to, that this could be the reason. The good news about PD is that it fails gracefully, so there shouldn’t be any danger in mismatches. 

Ever since I realized the utility of MagSafe, I’ve gone all-in. It’s just to handy and tidy to be able to stick this to that. Here’s a final example before I go. Remember I told you I had a MagSafe ring on the back of my computer monitor to mount my phone via the Rolling Square bracket? When I’m not Zooming, I stick a MagSafe PopSocket back there, and use it to hang up my headphones. 

Actually, one more tip: MagSafe PopSockets are amazing. Good for the phone, sure, but also on the back of an e-reader, an iPad mini (you can still use the magnetic cover when the PopSocket is detached), on a desk leg as a temporary cable hook, and more. You could even use one as an accessibly stick-on handle to help open your laptop lid—and use the same mount for your phone later. 

OK, yet another tip. I keep a MagSafe battery pack stuck to the side of my steel Toyo Y-350 toolbox, just in case.