If you have recently purchased any form of MacBook or if you have owned one for a time, it is evident that it will get dirty soon. When it comes to cleaning it, You run into the problem of your MacBook turning on when any key or touch feature is pressed.
It is practically hard to clean a MacBook without turning it on by unintentionally touching the trackpad or triggering any keys. If the battery is entirely dead, then it will not turn on when cleaned, but otherwise, most of the cleaning has to be done with the laptop turned on.
Cleaning a MacBook without turning it on is a pretty challenging chore, and you are best off figuring out inventive ways of triggering the keys and trackpad less. Keep reading to learn more about how to effectively clean your MacBook.
Why do MacBooks turn on when they’re being cleaned?
Before we talk about remedies to the challenges with cleaning a MacBook, we first describe what those issues are. It is crucial to know what the problem is when trying to solve it! The biggest issue with cleaning a MacBook is that it boots up upon opening, when the trackpad is touched when the hot bar is pressed, and when any keys are activated. This makes it very tough to clean as it just won’t stay shut down.
When cleaning a screen, it is easy to notice how clean it is when it is off. You can see the glare across the black screen and any fingerprints, dust, or smudges would be immediately spotted. When your MacBook keeps turning on, this makes it very difficult to see these flaws on the screen, and you are likely to not clean it as properly.
Touching any of the keyboard, trackpad, or hot bar while cleaning them turns the MacBook on. This means that if you clean the keys any further, they are more likely to be pressed, activating stuff on the MacBook. The trackpad and hot bar have a similar problem; they will cause the machine to perform unintended activities when cleaning. For example, if you swipe over the hot bar to clean up some dust, you might close out everything you’ve got open!
The MacBook will start up only by opening it. You can clean the outside of the MacBook with ease, but any MacBook from 2016 or after will turn on as soon as it opens. When cleaning the screen and keyboard on a MacBook, this is inconvenient. While the quick-start capabilities are useful when using the laptop, they are inconvenient when cleaning a MacBook.
Disabling the Keyboard and Trackpad
Now that you’ve seen how tough it is to keep a MacBook turned off while cleaning it, let’s look at a couple of solutions to the problem. These methods aren’t optimal because they necessitate several procedures to address only a few of the concerns.
The first remedy to a problem is to prevent the MacBook from booting up when it is opened. To do so, launch the Terminal application. Navigate to the Applications folder, and then to the Utility folder.
You should be able to locate the Terminal application. You’ll input or copy and paste a command to deactivate booting on opening from here. “Sudo NVRAM AutoBoot= percent 00” is the command without quotation marks. Then, to run the command, press [Enter]. After that, type “Sudo NVRAM AutoBoot= percent 03” and press [Enter] to turn it off.
This is a good solution to prevent your MacBook from booting up when you open it, but it only solves that one issue. Clicks on the keyboard and touches on the trackpad and hot bar will still start your MacBook. You may use a different mouse to prevent the trackpad from powering up your MacBook.
When you connect an external mouse to your MacBook, you can configure it to ignore trackpad interactions while the mouse is connected. If it’s a Bluetooth mouse, this should be an option in the Bluetooth options.
These are just a few methods for avoiding some of the most common causes of a MacBook turning on when cleaning it. Unfortunately, these processes are long and winding, and not everyone wants to cope with them.
What is the Best Way to Clean a MacBook?
If you don’t want to utilize the ways listed above to prevent your MacBook from going on, you can clean it properly to reduce how often it turns on and how much pushing the keys influences what happens on the MacBook.
When it comes to cleaning your MacBook, start with the screen. It will start up when you open your Macbook. While the MacBook is open, press the power button to turn off the screen.
After you’ve shut down the computer, make sure you don’t touch anything on the keyboard. Remove any fingerprints, dust, and/or smudges from the screen with a towel dampened with rubbing alcohol or a little water.
You can now move on to the keyboard so that the screen is clean. The MacBook will switch on when you touch the keyboard, trackpad, or hot bar, but it will no longer be difficult to discern smudges on the screen. You can blow any dirt off of your keys with a can of compressed air.
Clean the keys, trackpad, and hot bar with a cloth dampened with alcohol or water. Open the Terminal software inside Utilities to reduce the amount of time you spend pushing keys on your computer. Things you input while cleaning will appear on the screen in this manner, but it is quite rare that you would type anything that is a code, thus it will have no effect.
Finally, close your MacBook and clean the exterior. Wipe down the outside with the same moist towel to remove any smudges. You can also use the can of air to blow any dust or grime out of your MacBook’s ports, and you’re done! You now have a clean MacBook, and there should be no catastrophic modifications to your machine while it is turned on for the cleaning procedure!
