Like, when you plug it in, what makes it “snap” into place and stay there? You’re just sticking an object into a hole, and it’s not like there’s a moving part that locks and unlocks it.
In: Technology
There little spring detents where a bent piece of springy metal snaps into a dimple/cutout made for it. It’s more secure than friction alone, but still loose enough to allow for removal without any sort of “unlocking” mechanism.
Part of the socket housing forms a leaf spring that pushes on the connector. This creates a lot of friction that keeps the connector in place. In addition the connector can have holes to accept these springs creating a snapping effect as the connector is pushed far enough. I found a good picture of this for USB-A [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#/media/File:Male_and_Female_USB_Connectors.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#/media/File:Male_and_Female_USB_Connectors.jpg) In addition to these visible ones the four conductors are also sprung to create more friction.
Note that this is handled a bit differently for each cable standard. Micro-USB for example uses latches in the connector. USB-C also have the leaf springs in the connector but no latches.
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Friction. All those connectors have metal fingers which spring down and press onto the inner part of the connector.
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