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Apple Pencil failing connection with new iPad air

I have an Apple Pencil (1st gen) that I’ve been using with an older iPad Pro. It works fine with the iPad Pro; shows up as a device when plugged In to lightning port, pairing dialog pops up, links through bluetooth, works great.


All posts I have found have suggested that the pencil battery is damaged, but then why would it work fine with the iPad Pro? Battery life on pencil seems to behave fine when used with the iPad Pro.


When plugged into the new iPad Air, the pencil doesn’t show up as a physical device when plugged into the lightning port, which explains why it doesn’t pop up the painting dialog.


When plugged into the iPad Pro, the battery monitor shows it is 75% charged.

iPad Air 3 WiFi, Cellular

Posted on Aug 22, 2020 7:32 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 23, 2020 4:55 AM

Not sure how to cancel a question, so I figure I will post the actions between the post and the pencil working.


  • Fully charged pencil and the iPad; pencil was 75% charged and iPad out of the box was 65% charged, so hadn’t considered that would help anything, and perhaps it didn’t.
  • Charging occurred overnight... so I slept
  • Logged into iPad and went to Settings->General->About and scrolled to bottom to see if the pencil would show up when I inserted it into the lightning connector
  • Pop-up appeared with updated cellular settings, so I clicked Update
  • Plugged pencil in; unlike previously the pencil showed up; this had not occurred when tried previously
  • Pop-up appeared asking to pair the pencil; This had not occurred when tried previously
  • Pencil works fine.

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1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 23, 2020 4:55 AM in response to Applebed

Not sure how to cancel a question, so I figure I will post the actions between the post and the pencil working.


  • Fully charged pencil and the iPad; pencil was 75% charged and iPad out of the box was 65% charged, so hadn’t considered that would help anything, and perhaps it didn’t.
  • Charging occurred overnight... so I slept
  • Logged into iPad and went to Settings->General->About and scrolled to bottom to see if the pencil would show up when I inserted it into the lightning connector
  • Pop-up appeared with updated cellular settings, so I clicked Update
  • Plugged pencil in; unlike previously the pencil showed up; this had not occurred when tried previously
  • Pop-up appeared asking to pair the pencil; This had not occurred when tried previously
  • Pencil works fine.

Apple Pencil failing connection with new iPad air

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