How We Saved Our Wet Ipad After it Took a Bath

I see you, desperate ipad owner, Googling my first wet ipad post. Hopefully, you have come to the right place. I have also been a desperate owner of a wet ipad.

Two different wet ipads, actually.

I wrote about our first wet ipad experience a year ago, and I can see that my first post is still Googled every week. Probably by a mom or dad freaking out, holding a sopping wet expensive mess swaddled in a towel while yelling at someone and googling "Wet ipad" at the same time.

Such a shame, because that post was probably not very helpful.  I am sorry that my first experience and post was such a disappointment. Putting that wet ipad in the bag of rice did NOT work for us. Alas, that ipad never came back to life.

This wet ipad post might actually help you. There is hope: our second wet ipad came back to life! Now working as perfectly as it was before it took a short swim in the tub. No side effects at all; it has completely gone back to perfection, much to our surprise. I will tell you how we saved it - quickly, because you are probably stressing out and skimming this post anyway.

Our ipad was plunged into the FULL bathtub by our daughter who has special needs. Yep, pushed down under water. I do not know for how long...and does it really matter? Because the ipad was COMPLETELY UNDER WATER. Our daughter has a fascination with water, and don't ask how it even ended up in the tub in the first place. All that matters is that it was completely submerged.

We put it on the heater so the heat could go up into this hole.
Good idea? Probably not, I guess it could have melted something.
But hey, it worked!

My husband propped the toweled-off ipad up on the heater. We left it there for a day. Then I picked it up and tried to turn it off. We could see water underneath the screen. No, not the decorative little water droplets that are just there to tease you - and can I just say, that joke is just plain mean, Apple. No, there was a huge, obvious puddle underneath the glass in the middle of the screen. It was tricky to turn it off and took a few tries. Once it was off, I left it alone for two more days. Propped on the heater so that the heat could go up into the charging hole.

Please ignore the dust and focus on the handle
where we propped the ipad.

I will show you a picture so you can see that we propped it on the little handle that adjusts the angle of the vent. This allowed the ipad to be sitting right in the middle of the grate, or whatever you call that thing. This also happened around the time of the "polar vortex," so the heater was working hard.

The actual wet ipad. NOT a dramatization. 

After (im)patiently waiting, I turned it on and held my breath. It worked! The first few days, there were two little teeny streaks of water still under the screen, but the apps all functioned fine. A few days later, the streaks were gone. I probably should have left it on the heater for one more day.

Yay for dry, January heaters that make you wake up desperately wanting a drink of water. I think our last ipad got wet in the middle of summertime, and rice seemed like the only best option at the time. This time, when I blurted, "Quick put it in the bag of rice!" (because parents like us happen to have a gallon size zip-lock bag full of rice stored on a shelf for wet device moments such as these - true story) my husband said, "No, that didn't work last time. Let's try something else." Good idea, honey. It worked.

(I just want to add that if his idea had been a bad idea, as in... if the side of the ipad completely melted and oozed down into the heater vent, I would have been mad at him for the next ten years. But fortunately for all of us, that did not happen.)

Our ipad is back to fully functioning, the water is all dried up and gone, and we have all done multiple happy dances about it.

Best of luck to you and your ipad. I feel like this is where I should insert some kind of disclaimer or legal mumbo jumbo: this advice is unofficial, please don't sue me or send me mean comments. This might even be reeeeally terrible advice. You should not even really listen to me, because I am the one whose child managed to get not one, but two borrowed ipads from the school district completely wet. All I know is that it worked this time, and the huge bag of rice did not.

However, if you have a victorious wet ipad story to tell, please share in the comments. Other desperate wet ipad owners will thank you.

Good luck!

The bag of rice that is still floating around. Oh, I have
two message buttons in there that...um...our daughter also
threw into the bathtub. Have not checked yet to
see if they still work. Guess I should have balanced them
on the heater.