The Gloves Are Off in the Fight for Your Right to Repair

It has been a big year for the right to repair, the movement of advocates pushing for people to be able to fix their own electronics and equipment without manufacturer approval. The issue has gathered broad support from technologists, farmers, military leaders, and politicians on both sides of the aisle. It is popular with just about everyone—except the companies who stand to gain if the parts, instructions, and tools necessary to fix their products remain under lock and key.

Three US states passed right-to-repair laws this year, including in heavily Republican states like Texas where the measure received a unanimous vote in both the House and Senate. Repair advocates are planning to continue that push into 2026 and beyond, applying pressure to legislators in an attempt to give gearheads more options when it comes to the gadgets they use every day. It marked a big shift for the right-to-repair movement, which has been lobbying for decades to allow users to repair their gadets—from iPhones to laptops—without going back to the manufacturer or voiding the warranty by taking it to an unauthorized repair shop.

“The fundamental problem with restricting the right to repair is that when you buy equipment, you have a competitive market,” says Nathan Proctor, senior director of the campaign for the right to repair at the United States Public Interest Research Group. “Once you have the equipment, if the manufacturer can make the repair a proprietary process, there’s no competition at all.”

While the right to repair has broad support around the world—Canada and the EU, among others, have passed laws and issued rulings in consumers’ favor—the US often finds itself the focal point of the movement. For years advocates have been pushing for federal laws to let people change their phone’s battery or fiddle with their tractor without running afoul of what manufacturers will allow. Despite bipartisan support, nothing has come to pass, which is why this year’s state-level laws were so important.

For many advocates, the right to repair is an environmental issue. People are less inclined to throw gear into landfills if they can fix it. While some companies have gotten better about owning up to their environmental impacts by, say, switching to cardboard or recyclable materials for packaging, efforts to make the products themselves recyclable have been slower coming. That’s begun to change. Even a company like Apple, long resistant to letting people tweak their own iPhones, has begrudgingly started offering self-repair options to its customers. So, too, has Google, which redesigned its Pixel Watch to make it more repairable after pressure from repair advocates.

Despite these victories, companies continue to find ways to dance around regulations, obfuscate repair manuals, and make some repair tools available to customers only in certain states. Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, which offers how-to guides and sells gadget repair kits, says the next big step after 2025’s legislative wins will be making sure companies are following the new laws. “We’re seeing different levels of malicious compliance from different companies,” Wiens says.