Taptic Mod on an iPod Nano 3rd Gen

This is a step by step guide to adding a haptic motor to an iPod Nano 3rd Gen.

You’ll need 2 parts for this mod, this style of haptic motor from aliexpress, and a 520mAh replacement battery for the nano. This mod requires that you change the battery.

After dissembling the Nano, unsolder these wires from the old battery in preparation for replacement.

This is the new replacement battery, ensure that you solder the wires to the correct pads on the motherboard.

Here you see the rough placement of the new battery and the haptic motor, the new 520mAh battery leaves just enough space in this orientation to leave a channel for the haptic motor to fit into.

This is the clicker on the motherboard, this is what produces the scroll wheel sound and what we will be soldering to. Now from here you could choose to remove this component and solder the haptic motor to the pads, but for ease and later reversibility if I choose to remove this mod, I’m soldering the haptic motor onto the sides of the clicker.

Now solder some coated wire from the clicker to the haptic motor, polarity does not matter. Conveniently, the battery shell has a groove cut out you can snake the wires through as you can see. In this picture I have the motor in the top right hand corner of the iPod but I found to close properly, you’ll need to adjust it to more of the center of this channel.

And voilà! Your iPod is completely functional, I’ve taken mine out in public, and use it as one of my daily drivers, no need to be careful and concerned about durability, it’s great for going to the gym in my personal use case, so you know it’s robust!