Resonators lose 15% of their total XM capacity per day, even without enemy attacks. This decay means that a portal left unattended for seven days will revert back to unclaimed status. Recharging is the act of transferring some of the XM from your scanner‘s reserves into a friendly portal’s resonators in order to replenish XM lost to decay or enemy attacks.

How to Recharge Resonators

To recharge a portal’s resonators, the portal must belong to your faction, and you must either be standing within action range of it (40 meters) or hold that portal’s key. Select the portal from the scanner screen, then tap the “Charge” button to bring up the recharge screen. Alternatively, you can select a portal key from your inventory, then tap the “Charge” button to the left of the resonator charge level meters. The meters along the sides of the screen show the level of charge for the corresponding resonator. A resonator that is fully charged will have a dot above it.

Each recharge consumes up to 1,000 XM. Tap the “Charge All” button to distribute it evenly between all the portal’s resonators that are not fully charged. Tapping the meter for a specific resonator changes the button to read “Charge;” the entire 1,000 XM will then be directed only to that resonator. Tap the selected meter to deselect it. If the full amount of XM isn’t needed to top off the selected resonator(s), any unused XM is returned to your reserves. Note that the higher a resonator’s level, the greater its XM capacity, and thus it will require more charges to fill. When the targeted resonator(s) are fully charged, or if you move out of range without a key, the “Charge” button will dim.

The “Boost Charge All” or “Boost Charge” button will draw up to 15,000 XM from your reserves (in blocks of 1,000 XM) at once for recharging, distributing it in the same fashion as a regular recharge. This is handy if you need to quickly shore up a portal that is under attack. As with the “slow recharge” method, any unused XM is returned to your reserves.

You receive 1 AP for every 100 XP the portal receives from your recharge action.

Efficiency

When you are within the portal’s action range, recharges are always 100% efficient: all the XM you spend is transferred to the portal’s resonators. Remote recharges, however, lose some XM in the transfer, and recharge efficiency decreases with range. If the efficiency drops below 50%, you will not be able to recharge the portal. However, your remote recharges will become more efficient as you level up. Your maximum remote recharge range (the distance at which recharge efficiency hits 50%) is computed as follows:

= 250,000 × L

…where d is the distance in meters and L is your current agent level. The remote recharge efficiency at a particular distance is computed as follows:

E = 1 – d ÷ (500,000 × L)

…where E is the remote recharge efficiency percentage, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. Remember that when E goes below 50%, you cannot recharge. So for example, if you are a level 4 agent and recharge a portal 100 kilometers away, it will be recharged at 95% efficiency. This means that with each 1,000 XM recharge, the portal receives 950 XM, while 50 XM is wasted.

Strategy

  • With regards to AP gain, XM efficiency, or earning the Recharger medal, it makes no difference whether you use regular or quick charge, or whether you charge resonators individually or all at once. However, wasted XM does not help you, so in-person recharging is preferred.
  • If the resonator meters fail to increase when you recharge, you may have run afoul of speedlock. Stop moving, wait a bit, and try again.
  • Because it costs so much XM, you might want to hold off recharging if there isn’t any readily available XM where you are and you aren’t willing to use power cubes.
  • If you’re playing alone, and you have no particular task you need to perform when there’s plenty of XM around to replenish your reserves, you should look through the keys in your inventory and see if any friendly portals need recharging. Any XM you don’t pick up because your reserves are full (and that you aren’t intentionally leaving behind for other agents) is wasted potential. Recharge some portals and pick up that XM.

History

  • 24 January 2013: Recharging grants 10 AP. (Previously, no AP was granted.)
  • 1 August 2013: Agents can now remotely recharge individual resonators.
  • 6 February 2014: The Recharger medal is introduced.
  • 24 February 2015: Boost recharger is added to the scanner.
  • 5 November 2018: Recharging gets a revamped UI with the release of Ingress Prime. Notably, the UI starts referring to this action as “charging” instead of “recharging.”
  • 15 February 2023: Niantic announces that recharging now earns an amount of AP proportional to the XM charged.