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Clean Unibody Surface
- Thread starter borgward
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The aluminium is not coated with anything which reacts with a cleaning solvent like isopropyl alcohol or even water.
EXTERNALS
For the aluminium case and even for the topcase (the keyboard key and the touchpad), find either some 99 per cent isopropyl alcohol wipes (like those from a medical supply store used for cleaning skin just before/after an injection), or pick up some clean, microfibre cloths and a bottle of 99 per cent isopropyl alcohol, to wet the cloths with the alcohol and to use that for wiping away those surfaces. You’ll want to do all this cleaning with the system powered down.
For the screen, because the glass is coated with an anti-glare layer, you’ll want to find a kit for cleaning laptop/monitor/glass phone displays, as the composition of the wet solution in those pads differs in a way which won’t risk stripping away this anti-glare coating.
INTERNALS
If you really want to do a full cleaning of your unibody system (something I’ve done a few times), and if you’re comfortable with opening and disassembling/reassemlbing electronics, follow up all of the above by using the iFixit guides for taking apart the system internals — 13-inch / 15-inch / 17-inch — cleaning the heat exchange fins and exhaust fan blades, and by buying a thermal paste kit which includes cleaning pads and a tube of fresh thermal paste for applying to the CPU, GPU (if your model is a 15/17-inch with a discrete GPU), and PCH. (These logic board components will all have heat-sink plates on them, which can be removed, cleaned, and readied for the new thermal paste.) There are many pastes available: folks generally report good experiences with Noctua and Arctic Silver pastes (the key here is to avoid high-end pastes which use liquid metal, as these are extremely difficult to work with and, if they make a mess on the logic board, can also short out the board).
While you’re in there, don’t be surprised if you find other detritus, including dead bugs, hair, and dander/skin cells which all need to be cleaned out. This is where having cotton swabs and that bottle of isopropyl alcohol comes in handy.
KEY CAPS
After all of this, there will be one more place where old dirt might still be hanging out. Whether you want to fuss with it is a matter of how involved you want to get. Specifically, the dirt and grime beneath each keyboard key: this will require removing each key carefully, staying mindful of the tiny bits on the butterfly mechanism piece beneath which hold up the key. (for the unibody era MBPs and earlier, such as the white/black polycarbonate MacBooks, these keys all use a shared scissors-style mechanism).
Then, once the key/mechanism are out of the way, use some tweezers and isopropyl-wetted cotton swabs to clean out all the gunk within, before placing each key back into place. You’ll want to be careful around the silicone nub at the middle of each key cap: this is what makes contact below with the board which detects a keypress, so you don’t want to tear and/or remove those.
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Follow Apple's instructions:
support.apple.com
How to clean your Apple products - Apple Support
Get recommendations and guidelines for cleaning your Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Vision Pro, display, or peripheral device.
Follow Apple's instructions:
How to clean your Apple products - Apple Support
Get recommendations and guidelines for cleaning your Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Vision Pro, display, or peripheral device.
This covers much of what I covered specifically for the unibody MB/MBPs, but is written to cover a broad stroke across multiple generations of Apple products (each with their own, peculiar/specific features necessitating specific approaches for cleaning).
What I covered above comes from years of working on, maintaining, and cleaning the unibody line from late 2008 to 2012 (and many of those steps also cover much of the rMBP era of 2012–2015, display glass coating excepted).