How To Dry Out Wet Electronics 

1 disconnect all power 2 bath in demineralised water 3 let dry fully 4 pray

How to dry out wet electronics? Step 1. Drop to your knees and scream and curse at the top of your lungs Step 2. Repeat step 1.

Put it in a bowl of rice at night, go to bed, and during the night, Asians will be drawn by the rice and will repair you device...

This isn’t helpful because almost everyone watching this is watching it after something like that happened..

I've had a laptop that ended up submerged in water. Removed the battery and left it drying outside for a week and it came back to life! Not only that, but I'm using it right now, 4 years later :-)

Got a waterproof s8 so ha! *sips coffee and spills it on laptop*

i couldn't hear a thing from this video bc my laptop's volume isn't working bc of water damage... smh

Watching this on the water socked electronic 👌

This guy looks a lot like the guy from Linus Tech Tips🤔

6:24 that ad transition was hilarious! =D

I do electronic repair for a living and what he says in this video is sooo good. Let me add that you should ALWAYS back up any important information because none of this is a guarantee to fix. Also, the salt in salt water can completely corrode the internals of a phone in just a matter of hours unless it is completely cleaned out with alcohol.

Dropped a cup of water on my laptop a year ago and left it on like an idiot which lead it to shorting out. I then took out the motherboard and all the other pcb's, left it in rice for a week then I submerged the laptop in a basin of Isopropyl Alchohol for an hour, let it evaporate (3 hours) and my laptop was as good as new, although good do with an upgrade now :) So top notch advice Linus.

I spilled a cup of coffee with cream/sugar on my laptop and power went out and wouldn't start back up. I did what our IT folks did when I did this at work. I disconnecte power, wiped it dry on outside as much as possible, then placed it under a fan overnight - and prayed. Worked the next day. I learned that you must ensure that it is completely dry before trying to restart or components could be damaged.

I have an analogy for exactly this. Roughly one and a half years ago, I spilled water on my laptop. I was stupid and decided to try turning it on after wiping the outside. It worked... For a bit. Then I saw it BSOD. I thought it was done for and let it stay for nearly a year. Then a year later, I decided to try it again. It works without complaints nowadays. Patience is key.

linus my laundry now smells like underage drinking and that feeling you get when you forget the person youre talking tos name

I noticed this video a few days ago. I didn't click on it because I thought I didn't need to spend the time watching it. It's now a few days later and I just spilled some water on my gaming mouse. I think I got all the water out but I'll take the advice of waiting at least 24 hours before I plug it in again. This video is the best you've done in recent memory. Thanks for making it, Linus.

missed opportunity for an iFixIt sponsor

I spilled maruchan soup (instant noodles) on my keyboard once. I immediately plugged it off, took all the keys out and submerged them on an isopropyl alcohol bath. Would've done the same with the keyboard itself but I didn't have the appropriate screwdriver to open it, so I just poured the same alcohol on every tiny hole it had. After drying the keys and the outside of the keyboard, I poured a whole 1Kg of rice on my keyboard and left it there for almost 2 days. After that, I put the keys in place, plugged it in and it worked, I'm still using it.

My Dad and Brother both are in the Industrial Automation sector. I've actually had to physically wash pc boards with sunlight dishwashing soap and/or Handy Andy. Though some components on the boards I have to wash carefully and not soak. Also you have to be careful as some white markings on some boards if soaked too long actually come off when you then use a paint brush or tooth brush when scrubing. Then wash off good and proper with clean water. Then once drip dried, I stick them into a normal oven and put it on till the light comes on and the heat is just hot enough that it is a bit hot to touch the board and components, but not too hot to melt anything. Then leaving it in the oven for a minimum of at least 3 hours. If you have thermerfan in the oven even better. Then the boards are usually reassembled into their boxes or taken to be placed back in the machines on the factory floor. It may sound a bit nuts. But it works and in some cases it is the only way we can save some of the boards or drives. Industrial things can get quite messy. When you have to use a screwdriver to dig out the fans to get them to work. You know things are bad. I've done my fair share of digging things out.

I'm suprised you didn't mention rust building up in the electronics. Many devices survive the initial soaking only to die a month later.

I bought a dehydrator from Walmart for like $30... doesn’t get too hot and works great.

The short circuiting most times does not cause permanent damage. What does however is the corrosion that happens as a result of the traces being exposed to ionized water. If it was fresh water, a rinse/scrub with isopropyl alcohol and then a few minutes with airflow to evaporate should be fine. If it was coffee/juice/etc, rinse with distilled water first and then do it with alcohol and air dry. The quicker this can be done, the better. Also heat isn’t a good idea as it speeds up the chemical reaction that causes corrosion. Also keep alcohol away from speakers/microphones, they don’t like it too much.

There was a scientific paper in 2016 that showed the best substance to dry electronics was kitty litter... rice was entirely ineffective.

Unplug it and throw it out the window.

You’re going to have to explain how adding a desiccant would concentrate the dissolved solids, forming a short. I’m fairly certain the same thing would happen with air drying. But I do believe that rice dust in your device is something to be avoiding.

Just watching this ‘cause I like Linus content. This happened to me a while ago with my laptop. I just turned it off and left it upside down and it still works great, I would know since I’m using it right now

Missed opportunity for a very good transition to ad part in the video. Linus should've said, "...after following our guide, If your device still fails to turn on...then buy a new one...but if it did turn on, then try out SQUARE-SPACE!!..."

I've spilled coffee on an old keyboard. After drying it normally, it was fine until some keys started to stick after several weeks probably because of the sugar in the coffee. So I opened it and took a cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol and cleaned it completly (the plastic parts, not the circuit board). And now it doesn't work at all. Cleaned up an old keyboard that was functioning perfectly the same way and now it doesn't work anymore either. I now doubt that isopropyl alcohol is a good idea.

A flawless way to recover electronics that have gotten wet is to quickly submerge them in a bath of distilled ice water (-35 degrees F minimum), then to either use a heat gun or a can of propellant and lighter to quickly dry them. works every time!

Working in a device repair shop made me learn very quickly that water damage really isn't that hard to deal with. Clean with water, use ultrasonic cleaner, clean with alcohol, dry and wam bam thank you maam you have a working device again.

I have cleaned several PC's with the soap and water method. Sometimes letting it dry for 2 days and then when I turn them back on the work like brand new. I have done this with motherboards, video cards, audio cards, Ethernet cards, and other PC components.

Wash with steam distilled water before alcohol. Water is a much better solvant of polarized molocules than alcohol. Then displace with alcohol. Its not the water that does the damage, it is the minerals in the water that does the damage. Shorting is not the only concern. Minerals in tap water, as well as other beverages, can also be caustic to the traces on the PCB if they are allowed to remain on the board.

Last time this happened, I removed my battery and threw my device inside a dehydrator. Worked out pretty well, no obvious permanent damage.

I once spilled ketchup on my laptop, I'm glad it didn't have a chiclet keyboard because I just waited for it to dry then I crunched out the dried ketchup.

I have a camera that went through the wash. When we found it after the load, we basically just set it aside and forgot about it for a bit thinking it was dead, but after a day or 2 when we found the sd card and battery in folds the washer and charged it, lo and behold it worked. This happened 4-6 years ago and I still have the camera to this day. The quality isn’t great, but probably because it is an older compact camera (roughly the size of a credit card and 1/4 inch thick). But boy oh boy, it is tough. I have taken it camping and gotten dirt in it, and it still works fine. I’ve taken it apart quite a few times (I got zapped my the capacitor once [DON’T EVER TRY THAT], but I was more cautious the future attempts and wore nonconductive gloves). But it is one tough camera, and I still use it to this day...

Great video. True. One month of drying is my method. Always work

Buy some silica gel cat litter. Pour a bunch of it into a sealable tub. Place device in tub. Seal tub shut. Leave in warm place for a few days.

Best first aid is to get a vacuum cleaner an vacuum all the holes. Or even using vacuum storage bags

Spilled Mountain Dew on my Mac keyboard, the wired chuckle key thing, so I immediately rinsed it with hot tap water and then let it dry in a sunny place in front of a fan. Still works!

I drop my Apple juice on my SCHOOL CHROMEBOOK..!!!

Hmm how convenient for this to go up when some of use are flooding

Who else trynna fix the school computer during Corona

I use the isopropyl alcohol sonic bath and silicate combined with warm heat and air flow in my shop for nearly all board related wet repairs... And in my 30 years in the industry have only had a few items not recoverable (referring to the non-idiots that take out the batteries; don't plug them in, or otherwise didn't find them at the bottom of a pool or lake, left by someone else weeks, months or years before).

I recently had a fire at my apartment, and now most of electronics smell like smoke. Do you have any tips how to remove smells / smoke smells from electrical components.

It rained on my console collection (left the skylight open), I disassembled everything and dunked all the boards in isopropanol, it displaces water and acts as a desiccant. I use the same method to dry custom PCBs after an ultrasonic bath. Isopropanol is dirt cheap and extremely useful.

5:04 "Ah I need a cigarette"

One day I spilled a water bottle directly on the keyboard of my gigabyte sabre 15 laptop. I thought everything was lost. I shutdowned it as fast as possible, it rebooted (I mistyped the power button), I shutdowned it again, turned it over, removed the battery and made it dry for 1 day surrounded by rice grain. Two days after, it rebooted without any problem, still working more than 1 year after. I think they conceived the keyboard so that water has a very hard time reaching the motherboard.

i’m watching this in my bathtub

DO NOT USE RICE. Even if this method "worked" I guarantee that the device would have worked without the rice anyway. I'm sure Louis Rossmann would love you for suggesting rice Linus.....

I've dropped my phone in the toilet some time back. After a while of drying everything works but the speaker was odd. Now it's fully functional.

wish i had watched this video 2 days ago....

It's kind of like getting pulled over for speeding. Do your best to get off with a warning, but assume you're getting a ticket.

Spilled coffee on my mechanical keyboard about 3 years ago, gave it an isopropanol bath and it works like a charm to this day

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that i accidentally left in my swim trunks while i was in my pool for >30 mins and once I noticed I had it in my pocket i completely dismembered it (easy for me since I have done many repairs on that model) and dunked everything in Isopropyl alcohol for a good while and used soft toothbrush to hopefully get rid of the chlorine deposits on anything and let everything dry for 24hrs. Needless to say it didn't so I got a brand new Galaxy S7 just few days after it came out about a month rolls by, I had kept the assembled phone in a bag tucked away, I just randomly thought to see if it would work AND IT DID and it worked perfectly not a single thing was wrong. #GodBlessSamsung

had a water-soaked psu once, due to filling a not fully checked loop. but i was lucky, i forced it dry with the not recommended hairdryer. blowing away all the liquid that not evaporated by the heat. had it back up and running the same day, and a few years from then on.

if data on drives are underwater and the data is important, don't take it out of the water and bring it to a specialist with water included (ah nvm Linus said it alrdy) (4:40)

I see... Coffee Lake!

Picked a PC up off the side of the road. Was totally water logged. Dried it out for a few months... Fired up no worries and ran for a year or more. Some PCI slots were sketchy. But it ran!

I put my wet cell phone in a bag of rice. Forget about it and a week later was wondering why my chicken and rice tasted so bad

Advice from a chemistry student: After disassembly, *multiple* washings with distilled water can be a good idea to clean of water-soluble junk, without introducing anymore impurities. Once that is done *one* washing with isopropanol is recommended, since it will evaporate very quickly, but as it messes with adhesives it should be done quickly and only with a small amount (50mL or so for a phone). Acetone would do the same job, but is a little more aggressive than isoprop and you usually don't get very pure acetone as a normal person (idk about the US; and no - nailpolish remover isn't a good idea).

Once I dropped my phone to the bucket of watter, put it into parts and left near the heater. After 2 days I turned in on and it was working for next 1.5 years ;)

Keep your friggin drinks away from your electronics. Easy fix....

The editor's sense of humor is just... something else. I mean, does anyone here think that this(6:27) is funny?

Your repair advice videos are the best, very enjoyable.

When you drop your phone into a bowl of soup to see if it would float

Wow as I was watching this vid I was brushing my teeth and I dropped my phone in the sink when the water was on. What a quintessence. XD this vid helped!

no joke literally an hour after watching this video i put my pants in the washer with my phone still in. ill give progress updates on how my phone is doing - i removed the batter as fast i could. thankfully no screws needed.

I dropped my 5 minute old drone in water, thought i dried it and tried to power it on at the mains... now I am waiting 24hours in the hope that I didn’t completely screw up.

And if you forgot you laptop in the rain... leave it in the kichen and go and do other stuff forgeting about it for a couple of days.

I've put my smartphone inside a rice bowl and its USB port went back to life

turns out my ''spill'' wasnt harmful to my computer. it was something my computer needed.

I dropped tea on my chromebook do you have any advice for that?

4:16 Accidentally spills coffee or limonade on laptop: *Takes out KARCHER pressure washer to wash out that residue* :D

Step one, cut power. Step two, soak in rubbing alcohol.

And that is why you make backups... 6:13

You forgot to mention removing all power sources including power cords/batteries. Where water damage is concerned we recommend our customers hard reset the device after power has been removed to drain all capacitors of power before commencing in any cleanup / dry out measures. Additionally if it still has water in it when it gets to our shop we disassemble it immediately and use an air compressor to blow out as much of the water droplets as possible to prevent corrosion and oxidization on the PCB.

Opening it and putting the PCB into an oven at 150C works perfect. Just remove anything thats not reflow soldered onto it before, plastic on soldered connectors are fine tho...

I hope this works. My parents opened the windows at my room because of the heat. But later that night it stormed and rained. A couple hours later i went t o bed and saw that my leptop was very very wet. I screamed as a little girl MOM DAD COME NOW. Firstly i wanted to set it on rice. Meanwhile my dad was looking at it i found this video and we opened evry screw and blow with the hairdryer on cool mode. Now i am letting it rest for the night. Plz pray for me.

No need to completely replace water damaged gadgets. Repairs or rescues can still continue.

Got a waterproof s8 and an invincible army laptop so ha! Spills coffee on tablet

Thanks to this video I was able to save my laptop. unfortunately the keyboard got damaged so I am not able to use it. fortunately I had a keyboard laying around so I am able to use that. Thank you.

Thought this was a HTB basic vid, I still love you Linus.

All hope is lost. My pc is bad My keyboard is bad

only about a year ago i spilt coffee onto my Corsair CS550M PSU, which in turn tripped the RCD for the entire house. having unplugged the psu from the mains and reset the fusebox (consumer unit in americaland) i proceded to wipe up any residue liquid left in the PSU. having cleared what i could see, i reconnected it into my pc and flicked the switch on the PSU, and what do you know, the darn RCD tripped again!!! this time i took it apart and left it out to dry over night, woke up put it all together and the pc booted up without tripping the RCD. Thankfully the motherboard also tripped its surge protection and protected my pc from any damage. and even today right now its still going strong and not had a problem

Yeah wiping pcb with towel will definitely help, killing it

6:25 That moment when Linus proves that he is, in fact, Canadian.

the way he says "sorry" is funny. he pronounced it as "soe ree". in the u.s. we say "saw ree"

Instructions not clear, Computer is on fire

A laptop mainboard for my model costs 60-70 bucks on ebay. Computer repair shops on my country charges 120-150 bucks plus for replacement of the mainboard.

Lol i spilt tea and I just wiped it with a towel

the latter part of this video is golden.

There's a techquickie question for you that you guys might be able to do a quick techquickie episode on why did it matter back in the day what logo was on your credit card vs nowadays it doesn't matter what logos really on your credit card such as like Visa Mastercard Discover or whatever

I guess he got this from Wet Laptop Recovery.

Spilled chocolate milk on my Corsair K70 once. Instantly turned off my PC and disconnected the keyboard, then wiped down as much as I could. Then shook off any other bits then put above a radiator that was warm enough but not boiling hot. Within 24-36 hours it was operational again. Granted the RGB lights to it were glitching our but over the span of a month or so, they fixed by themselves oddly enough (likely because I turned off the rgb lights since it was annoying) and it now works as if nothing happened.

I spilled glass of cola on my laptop, so I removed battery, keyboard keys and buttom shield, put it in front of a fan with medium warm air flow for like 5 hours and it's working now. But even after 5 hours some upper parts were still wet. I recommend you to dry yor laptop as long as possible if you have time fot that! Good luck!

awesome integration at the end, didnt expect that sudden squarespace spot. :)

I thought this was a How2Basic video so i clicked the Watch Later button before quickly unclicking the Watch Later button after noticing it was a TechQuickie video.

I had an iPhone 6s that got dropped in a full sink, I dried it as best as I could but like the reckless idiot that I am, I kept it on and plugged it in when I got home to see if it was still alive. For the next 10 days it was completely bricked, then once I plugged it in just to check if there was any life left in it, it powered up like nothing ever happened. That thing still works to this day, over a full year later.

I thought I DRIED my keyboard cmoplletely and then when I plugged it in again it was workin aaand then all of a sudden it stoppedd woorking is my keyboarad long gone?

Who'd win in a fight? The most advanced piece of human technology? Or one wet boi? 🤔