How do I know if my AirPods are working if the case is not lighting up.

Keep your AirPods near and Apple device and Open Bluetooth from settings and try to connect from that.

Or

Open your AirPods near and Apple device and check if popup occurs or not.

kennardfromsandsprings wrote:

How do I know if my AirPods are working if the case is not lighting up.

Can you hear anything through them? If you can't, they're probably not working.