How to clean a MacBook keyboard

After today’s post on disabling the wake on lid open, I got a comment from smarthieef on how we can switch off this behavior for the keyboard too, so we can only turn on the MacBook using the Touch ID button, making the keyboard cleaning process way easier.

Press and hold the left Control and Command buttons with right Shift button for a total of 7 seconds.

Without releasing them, press the Power button and hold together for an additional 7 seconds until your laptop shuts down. The login screen may flash for a second so don’t prematurely release the keys until the machine is off.

For your next startup, your Mac can only be powered on by using the Power button or closing and opening the lid.

I tested this on a 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro, and it works indeed. It is also a one-time thing, so on the next boot, it resets this behavior to the default one, so we can get the best of both worlds.

Update: I tested this on an M3 MacBook Air too, and it didn’t work.