How to Tell Your Right Earbud From Your Left

David Pogue
·Tech Critic
Updated

How to Tell Your Right Earbud From Your Left

This is one of those annoying first-world problems you’re probably too embarrassed to talk about. You pull your earbuds out of your pocket or your bag and plug them into your phone. How do you know which bud should go in your right ear, and which is for the left?

Here’s a stupidly easy fix. It’s been kicking around the Internet for awhile, but it’s fantastic:

Tie a little knot in your left earbud cord.

From now on, every time you put them on, you don’t have to fire up an electron microscope to hunt for the tiny “L” and “R” designations to figure out which ear gets which bud.

You know by looking—or even by touching.

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Adapted from Pogue’s Basics, Flatiron Books. Order here.