I came across a great tip for cleaning the dust/particles from my MacBook speaker grills! I assume this would work for any M-series or Intel MacBook. I have one of the Space Black M3 MacBook Pro's, and after some intensive use in an area with some stuff in the air, I noticed its grill holes had little white dots on some of them even though I gently wipe with an Apple cloth at the end of the day - that did not work. How to remove the particles from the holes?
(Note - I have a silver M1 MacBook Pro in the house, and I don't see this in the grills - maybe the Space Black is more susceptible?
Anyway - the the tip:
1) News to me - most of the little grill holes are NOT holes! Only a very small number of holes are truly speaker holes - I have read about 10%. The fake holes are made to look like holes, an Apple decision to make the grill more aesthetically pleasing by making the grills complementary to the size of the keyboard I guess.
2) So what are the dots? The hole is a little half sphere with a dab of MacBook color at the bottom. So the white dots are spheres where the paint has come off.
3) So wiping with water, light brushing, etc. will not work - in fact light brushing could make things worse by scraping off other black dots!
4) With that as background, here's the tip - take a mechanical pencil with very thin lead, and at an angle just move around the lead where the indentation is - you can feel the indentation when moving the pencil in vicinity of a dot you want to work on. Be generous with the lead, don't worry about getting more lead outside the 'hole' - that is easy to wipe off with a moist cleaning towel.
I guess test this with a non-Space Black MacBook since I did not do that, as maybe the lead color is more obvious because it won't match the MacBook color? The video I watched was recorded 7 months ago, pre-Space Black, so I am thinking it is close enough in color to the MacBook color when it's in a very small 'hole'.
For me it works perfectly! The grills look absolutely perfect.
Youtube video is here if you'd rather view than read - kudos to the author!
(Note - I have a silver M1 MacBook Pro in the house, and I don't see this in the grills - maybe the Space Black is more susceptible?
Anyway - the the tip:
1) News to me - most of the little grill holes are NOT holes! Only a very small number of holes are truly speaker holes - I have read about 10%. The fake holes are made to look like holes, an Apple decision to make the grill more aesthetically pleasing by making the grills complementary to the size of the keyboard I guess.
2) So what are the dots? The hole is a little half sphere with a dab of MacBook color at the bottom. So the white dots are spheres where the paint has come off.
3) So wiping with water, light brushing, etc. will not work - in fact light brushing could make things worse by scraping off other black dots!
4) With that as background, here's the tip - take a mechanical pencil with very thin lead, and at an angle just move around the lead where the indentation is - you can feel the indentation when moving the pencil in vicinity of a dot you want to work on. Be generous with the lead, don't worry about getting more lead outside the 'hole' - that is easy to wipe off with a moist cleaning towel.
I guess test this with a non-Space Black MacBook since I did not do that, as maybe the lead color is more obvious because it won't match the MacBook color? The video I watched was recorded 7 months ago, pre-Space Black, so I am thinking it is close enough in color to the MacBook color when it's in a very small 'hole'.
For me it works perfectly! The grills look absolutely perfect.
Youtube video is here if you'd rather view than read - kudos to the author!
