The Dreaded Butterfly Keyboard: trying to postpone the inevitable

In a nutshell: If you have an Apple MacBook Pro or other machine with the dreaded ‘butterfly’ keyboard and it starts to exhibit problems, you options are:

• If you experience the problem of a certain key sometimes not reacting, try detaching the keycap (important: do not try this without first reading the “How to” section below for instructions). After looking—with a magnifying glass—for obvious dust, hairs, or crumbs and carefully removing any with precise tweezers, blast the mechanism with air from multiple directions, and reassemble the key.
• If you experience the problem of a key producing multiple keystrokes per press, first do the above, and after reassembling the key, hit it many times as hard as you're comfortable with. Just type a piece of text like a madman, and there's a good chance that the key will behave afterwards.
• If the above doesn't help, or problems occur too often, or you are not comfortable with taking the keys apart, and you have bought the machine less than 4 years ago, your better option is to go for the Keyboard Service Program.

The full story

A few years ago I was kind of forced to buy a new MacBook Pro, because my previous one, a 2011 model, had the dreaded GPU failure—another design flaw by Apple albeit lesser known than the keyboard debacle. Given the high price and the rumours about the bad keyboard, I seriously considered buying a Thinkpad or other PC laptop, but it looks like I am still too much locked into the Apple ecosystem to take that step. I hoped that the newer design with the extra silicone ‘flaps’ built into the keyboard, would make it reliable enough that it wouldn't develop problems in the situation where the MacBook Pro would be sitting 95% of its lifetime. But that was too much wishful thinking.

Even despite the fact that this laptop sits on a Griffin Elevator in a normal room with regular levels of dust, some keys did develop problems within less than one year. The down arrow key was first, it would sometimes miss a press. Then the same started happening with the Return key. I found a very useful page on iFixit Answers that showed how both thes keys were assembled, and this allowed me to detach them without destroying them. I then blasted the insides of the mechanism with air like crazy, and that has effectively remedied this problem.

A while later however, another problem started showing up: some keys, especially the ‘E,’ started producing double and sometimes even triple presses. The extra press would often come late enough that typing ‘bed’ could result in ‘bede.’ I again took off the ‘E’ key and inspected the internals, but all I found was a tiny hair that was only visible with a 10× magnifying glass. I gave the key the same treatment as the others, but it kept on exhibiting the multiple keystrokes problem.

It seems to me that this key repeating problem is not caused by dust particles. It rather looks like the contacts become unreliable, maybe due to an oxide layer forming on them? The keyboard can become pretty hot when the machine is under heavy load during an extended period, like when running a modern game. Maybe this degrades the contact surfaces? This theory is further corroborated by the fact that I eventually did manage to make this problem go away, by simply punching the key much harder than usual. Percussive maintenance does work, even on delicate modern machines…

The good news is, after a class-action lawsuit, Apple has started a repair program that allows to bring in your machine if it obviously exhibits these problems with the keyboard. They will then replace the keyboard, which usually means replacing the whole top assembly. As explained in this video by Louis Rossmann, theoretically it is possible to replace only the keyboard, but only with very specialised tools because the thing is actually riveted into the case and in many machines you need to detach the glued-in batteries without rupturing them and setting your workshop on fire.

And by the way, I fully agree with Rossman that I expected a machine this expensive to at least be as reliable as a much cheaper one with similar specs, and also much more serviceable. Where are the days when Macs were modular machines that could be entirely taken apart without even needing a screwdriver?

Even though the repair program is free, the downside of course is that you will have to do without your computer for a few weeks. So if you are only having mild problems with the keyboard, it may be a better option to first try to remedy it yourself, but only if you feel confident enough that you won't make things worse.

How to detach the keycaps without destroying them

If you want to have an attempt at detaching the keycaps yourself, BE VERY CAREFUL. Do not simply yank on the caps from any direction, or you will break little hooks and the cap will be forever loose. The trick is to slide a thin piece of plastic in between the cap and the butterfly mechanism (see SHOVE in the pictures below). Do not go too deep, try to keep the plastic as horizontal as possible to ensure it does not go under the butterfly hinges themselves. Then shift the plastic towards the clips (called slide in the pictures) to detach them. For most of the regular keys, the cap is attached with two clips at its top end, and two hooks at the bottom. For these keycaps, start the SHOVE in the middle of the left and/or right edge, as indicated with the arrows in the photo below, then slide upwards. Once one of the clips is detached, you can usually keep sliding across the upper zone of the cap to detach the other clip as well.

A piece of cut-up blister packaging works well for this purpose, but a thin guitar pick (plectrum) should also work well. The longer keys like backspace will typically have 3 clips instead of 2.

For other keys, the procedure differs only in the place where you have to shove the pick and in which direction you should then slide it. For the ‘up’ arrow key, the clips are at the right. For the ‘down’ key, the clips are at the left. For the tall European style of Return key, the clips are at the left, and there are 3 of them. I have borrowed the photos from the iFixit page to illustrate this. Note how the whole mechanism of the return key has been detached in this photo, this is not how it is supposed to be.

To reassemble, slide the hooks back in their place, then re-engage the clips by pressing on the zone where they reside.

The space bar is notoriously difficult. If you feel you need to take it apart, consider going for the Apple repair program instead. If you break things, you won't be able to benefit from the free repair.

And of course, the usefulness of the repair program is very debatable. The replaced keyboard will suffer from the same flaws. I wish there would be a replacement program where I could exchange my inherently flawed MacBook Pro for a considerable rebate on a late 2019 MacBook Pro with its reliable scissor keyboard.

A final piece of advice

If it isn't already obvious: never do anything in the vicinity of your butterfly keyboard equipped machine, that could cause any small particles to fly around. Or, cover the keyboard with a sheet of paper if there is any such risk.

Recently, the backspace key started acting up. Something had obviously got inside the mechanism, but with the naked eye I couldn't see anything suspicious. Even after repeated sessions of removing the key cap and blowing air, it kept feeling strange and sometimes did not respond to presses. I then took a flashlight and magnifying glass, and finally saw that some tiny piece of something had got under the mechanism. It was a pain to remove because Apple's silicone flaps that were supposed to keep junk from getting inside, now made it hard to get the junk out. I eventually managed it with extra fine tweezers, and it proved to be a tiny piece of clipped fingernail any other keyboard wouldn't care about. So, don't clip your fingernails in the vicinity of the keyboard…