Usually this is two minutes with a cloth, and it's the attachment at fault rather than the dryer.
That's worth saying up front because it's not the answer people expect. When something stops holding, the instinct is that the dryer has lost its grip. Usually it hasn't — there's a film of product between two surfaces that need to touch, and once you clean it off, the magnets work exactly as they did on day one.
How they actually hold on
The attachments are held by magnets, not clips. There's a magnetic ring in the collar of each attachment and a matching ring on the end of the dryer, and they're designed to hold firmly while still letting you rotate the attachment to whatever angle you want.
That's a clever bit of design and it's part of why these are nice to use. It's also the reason the failure mode is what it is: magnets don't wear out from being used, but they do stop working properly if you put something between them.
Try this first, and it's free
Clean both mating faces. Both. Almost everybody cleans one.
Take the attachment off and look at the inside of its collar — the ring surface that touches the dryer.
Now look at the ring on the end of the dryer itself. This is the one people forget.
Wipe both with a dry lint-free cloth. If there's a stubborn film, a cloth very slightly dampened with water on the attachment is fine — but keep water away from the dryer's opening entirely; wipe that dry only.
Check for hair wound round the ring, which is extremely common and surprisingly hard to see.
Let everything dry completely, then refit.
What builds up there is hairspray, serum, heat protectant and dry shampoo, in thin layers, over months. It goes on invisibly and it's slippery. Two magnets separated by half a millimetre of film hold far less well than two magnets touching, and half a millimetre of film is what you've got.
If the attachment now holds properly, that was it. Nothing is broken and you've fixed it for nothing.
When it's the attachment that's finished
If both faces are genuinely clean and it still won't hold, look at the attachment rather than the dryer.
Has it been dropped? The magnet ring is mounted in the plastic collar, and a hard knock can break that mounting so the ring sits loose or crooked. Give it a gentle wiggle — if the ring moves independently of the plastic, that's your answer.
Is the collar cracked, chipped or distorted? Even a small crack changes how the two faces sit together, and a collar that's gone slightly oval won't seat flat.
Has it been getting very hot? This is the mechanism nobody mentions. The magnet material used for this sort of job loses strength permanently once it gets past a certain temperature — it doesn't recover when it cools. An attachment that's been left on the dryer through years of high-heat use, or repeatedly put down somewhere hot, can genuinely end up weaker than it started. I can't prove that's what happened to any particular one, but it's a real property of the material and it fits what you'd expect: old attachments that hold less well than new ones on the same dryer.
Test it against a different attachment. This is the deciding move. If another attachment holds firmly on the same dryer, the dryer is fine and that one attachment is done. If nothing holds on that dryer but they all hold on someone else's, then it's the dryer end.
When it is the dryer
Rare, but it happens.
If no attachment holds properly, the faces are clean, and you've confirmed the same attachments grip fine on a different Supersonic — then something's wrong at the dryer end. Usually that's physical damage to the ring or to the plastic around it, from a drop or from years of attachments being twisted on and off against grit.
That's a real repair rather than a clean, and it's worth having looked at while the machine is open, because a dryer that's been dropped hard enough to affect the ring has often had other things shaken loose too. The diagnostic is the route for that, and I'd tell you what it is before touching anything.
But please do the two-attachment test first. I'd rather you didn't post me a dryer for a job a cloth would have done.
Buying a replacement attachment
Good news: attachments are interchangeable across the standard Supersonic range and the Nural, so you don't need to match the exact generation of your dryer. The Supersonic Travel takes them too.
The exception is the Supersonic r, which is a different machine with its own attachments — those don't cross over either way.
One thing to know: on the Nural, the dryer recognises which attachment is fitted and adjusts accordingly. An older attachment will physically fit a Nural and work fine as an attachment, but it won't be recognised, so you lose that feature. Nothing breaks; it just behaves like a plain attachment.
If you're not certain which dryer you've got, here's how to find out — it takes a minute and it saves buying the wrong thing.
On third-party attachments: some are fine and some have noticeably weaker magnets, and you can't tell by looking. If the magnet strength is the exact thing you're trying to solve, that's the wrong place to economise.
Stopping it happening again
Take the attachment off before you put the dryer away. Storing them attached means the mating faces sit together, warm, with product film between them, for hours. Taking it off lets both faces stay clean and gives you a reason to glance at them.
Wipe the rings occasionally. Once a month, when you do the filter. It takes five seconds and it prevents this entirely.
Don't store the dryer resting on an attachment. The weight bears on the collar, which is the part that has to stay flat and true.
Broadly the same principle as everything else with these — most of the damage happens while it's put away rather than while it's in use, which is why how you store it matters more than people think.
Common questions
It holds but it spins too freely. Is that a fault?
No, that's by design — they're meant to rotate while held so you can point them where you like. Loose rotation is normal; falling off is not.
It falls off only when it's hot.
Worth taking seriously. Either something is expanding slightly out of true, or the magnet has lost strength with heat. Test a different attachment when both are hot and you'll know which end it is.
Can I glue the magnet back in?
I'd rather you didn't. It needs to sit flat and square to work, and glue that's slightly off makes a permanent problem out of a temporary one. Attachments aren't expensive relative to getting it wrong.
Is a loose attachment dangerous?
Not dangerous, but it's worth not ignoring — an attachment that drops off while hot can mark a surface or burn a hand, and one that's about to fall off tends to do it at the worst moment.
The magnets have gone rusty.
That's water. Dry them thoroughly and keep water away from them in future. If it's pitted rather than just marked, the attachment's had it.
Both faces are clean, another attachment holds fine, so I need a new attachment — will you sell me one?
No, I don't sell parts. Go to Dyson or a reputable retailer. I've told you what it is so you can buy the right thing once rather than the wrong thing twice.
Clean both rings, then try a different attachment. Between them those two steps identify this fault completely, and the first one fixes it most of the time.
And if you came here for this and you've been putting up with the dryer cutting out or the cable playing up — those are the ones actually worth dealing with, and they don't fix themselves.
The Repair Works is an independent UK repair service, run by me, Paul — 25 years of hands-on repair experience, working by post for customers across the whole country. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Dyson.
