Butterfly Keyboard MacBooks: What To Do Now The Programme Has Ended

One key that repeats itself. One that does nothing until you hit it hard. One that feels different from its neighbours. If you own a MacBook made between 2016 and 2019, you know exactly which keyboard this is, and you are not unlucky — this is the defining fault of that generation.

If your machine is a MacBook Pro 16-inch A2141, or any Apple Silicon Mac, you are not affected — those use the redesigned Magic Keyboard with a scissor mechanism, and it is reliable.

The butterfly mechanism was designed to make the laptop thinner, and it works by having the keycap pivot on a very shallow hinge with almost no travel. The tolerance around that hinge is measured in fractions of a millimetre, which means a single crumb, a grain of sand or ordinary desk dust is enough to stop a key registering or make it register twice.

Apple revised the design three times. The third generation added a silicone membrane that helped meaningfully but did not solve it. The problem was never manufacturing quality — it was the mechanism itself, which is why the design was abandoned entirely.

For a single key that has just started misbehaving, careful cleaning under the keycap with compressed air at the correct angle sometimes clears the debris. Apple published a technique using compressed air in a rotating pattern, and it is genuinely worth trying before anything else. It is not a permanent fix — the mechanism will still be susceptible — but it can buy months for a few minutes of work.

What we would not do is lever keycaps off yourself. Butterfly keycaps are far more fragile than scissor ones and break on removal routinely, which turns a cleaning job into a parts job.

On these models the keyboard is riveted into the top case, together with the trackpad and the battery. There is no keyboard-only replacement — the assembly comes as one unit. That is why the repair costs what it does, and it is also why it delivers a genuinely new keyboard, a new battery and a new trackpad at the same time.

For a machine you rely on daily, this is usually the right answer. You are effectively refreshing three wear components at once on a machine that still has years of useful life.

If the machine mostly lives on a desk, an external keyboard sidesteps the problem entirely for the cost of the keyboard. We suggest this honestly to customers whose usage suits it, because paying for a top case on a machine that never leaves a desk is not always the sensible choice.

One dead key on a machine near the end of its life is survivable. What we would flag is that the same debris sensitivity applies to the whole board, so a machine with one failing key often develops a second within a year.

• Do not eat over the keyboard. This is not a joke on these machines — a single crumb is genuinely enough.
• Use a silicone keyboard cover if you work anywhere dusty. It slightly changes the feel and considerably reduces failures.
• Blow the keyboard out with compressed air every few months, holding the machine at 75 degrees and working in a rotating pattern.
• Close the lid when the machine is not in use, which keeps most airborne dust out.
• Do not press harder on a sticking key. That damages the hinge and turns an intermittent key into a broken one.

For most of these models, yes. An A1989 or A1990 is still a capable machine, and a top case replacement gives you a new keyboard, battery and trackpad in one go. Where we advise thinking harder is the A1708 with multiple faults, or any of them with a liquid-damaged board on top — at that point the total can pass what the machine is worth, and we would rather show you that arithmetic than take the job.

Free diagnosis at our Ghumar Mandi workshop. See also our guide to A1502 and A1708 common faults and our MacBook repair service.