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Turn Your Broken Device into an Online Repair Manual

Our goal at iFixit is simple: to provide manuals for how to fix every device in the world. Why? We believe that if you can’t fix it, you don’t own it.

Yet, even if our in-house team of writers spent the next hundred years creating repair manuals for devices, we’d only hit the tip of the iceberg. There are so many electronics, vehicles, and appliances out there that it’s not conceivable for the iFixit team to write repair manuals for everything. That’s why we’ve enlisted some help from technical writing students around the country. It’s a triple-win: college students practice and hone their technical writing skills, people from around the world gain a comprehensive set of repair guides, and more devices are kept out of the landfills.

But we’re encountering a new problem: as the program grows, the demand for new devices for students is also exponentially increasing. We have been fortunate to receive gracious donations from organizations such as Green Citizen, ReCellular, and ERI. However, we still need more devices.

Device donations

We’ll welcome with open arms any cell phones, digital cameras, laptops, or tablets you’d be willing to part with. Just send us your old electronic device, and we’ll have a team of students create repair guides for it. We kindly ask that the device doesn’t already have guides (a quick search on our site can easily confirm this), that it’s intact, and manufactured after 2005. In fact, we set up a top-50 wish list for our most-requested devices. The devices don’t have to be functional, and they don’t have to be in perfect shape.

To sweeten the deal, anyone who sends us a device will receive a $5 off iFixit coupon. However, if the device is on the top-50 wish list, you’ll receive a $20 off coupon instead! We understand that these are high-value devices, and we hope our humble coupon code will be a token of our gratitude.

A technical writing student repairs a Game Boy Advance
A student removing the back cover from a Game Boy Advance.

So how can I help?

Grab your device and some packing materials; fill out this form and get the device packed up. We’ll email you a packing slip that you can put on the package. Once we receive the device, we’ll put it in our to-be-done queue, and email you a coupon code for your efforts!

Once your device is used for guides, we’ll either keep it for future guide improvements (in case changes need to be made) or properly e-recycle it on our own dime. You’ll never have to worry about sending it to a landfill, and we’ll never sell the device to anyone for profit. That’s our promise for your generous contribution.

Thanks to everyone in the repair community, we received enough devices to keep our students busy for the foreseeable future. We’re no longer asking for donations but if you have a device you need to fix, try looking for a guide on our site or creating one yourself! You can also check out our student guides to see how your donation is used.