This viral iPhone 12 MagSafe battery hack has us wishing we'd thought of it

What you need to know

• Apple's new MagSafe battery pack is now available for iPhone 12.
• One user has discovered a wild hack using Apple's existing iPhone dock.
• It can be used to turn one into a magnetic charging stand for your iPhone.

If you've got an iPhone 12 and Apple's new MagSafe battery pack then you don't want to miss out on this awesome hack to turn it into a magnetic iPhone charging stand.

The setup was shared by Parker Ortolani on Twitter, who noted "You can turn the MagSafe battery into a magnetic iPhone stand/dock if you plug it into the lightning dock!"

As you can see from the photos, it involves placing your MagSafe battery pack on an iPhone charging dock, the one sold by Apple is pictured but if it fits there's no reason a third-party option wouldn't work either. With the battery pack in situ you can place your iPhone 12 on the dock magnetically, removing it at will thanks to the MagSafe technology on the iPhone.

This works because the iPhone 12 can be charged through the battery pack using a Lightning cable and passthrough. The new battery pack also supports reverse charging, because it can be charged from your iPhone if your iPhone is plugged in, just put your cable in the phone and not the battery pack. From Apple:

If both your iPhone and MagSafe Battery Pack need to be charged, you can charge them at the same time. Attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone and then plug the MagSafe Battery Pack into a power adapter. Using a 20W or higher power adapter, the MagSafe Battery Pack can charge your iPhone with up to 15W of charging power. You can also charge both if you attach your MagSafe Battery Pack to your iPhone, then plug your iPhone into a power source. You might want to charge this way if you need to connect your iPhone to another device while charging, like if you're using wired CarPlay or transferring photos to a Mac.

Of course, this is quite an expensive solution for a charging stand if you don't own these products already, but still a neat trick. Wish I'd thought of that.