Obviously, one of the great enemies of any technological device is dust, grease and dirt in general. The only way to combat these elements is to simply clean our device from time to time. The problem is when it comes to a device with a keyboard, cleaning the keys can cause us to press things that we would not like. What can we do? As we can lock the keys of a MacBook to clean them? There are several options.
Imagine that we are concentrating on cleaning the keyboard, we open some other app and we accidentally send messages or emails, it does not seem like a good idea, right? In these cases, we will need to lock the MacBook keyboard to proceed to clean it without any negative consequences.
Why should we lock the keys on a MacBook to clean them?
While it is feasible to turn off our MacBook from Apple> Shut down. The problem is that on modern MacBooks any key starts the device. We even open the lid and it turns on. Obviously, this makes performing a good cleaning too complicated. Something that is generally recommended to do often to prevent dust from accumulating, among other things.
Use the lock screen to disable most keys
If we click on Apple > Lock screen, it will take us to a login screen, where we will have to enter our account password or use Touch ID to unlock.
This gives us the possibility to clean our keyboard. The only thing we have to keep in mind is not to touch the Touch ID button with our finger or accidentally write the password. As long as we don’t do this, which isn’t too complicated, we shouldn’t have any problems.
One thing to keep in mind is that this will not disable the media keys. So if we press these keys we could be lowering the brightness or the volume. It is something minimal that we can later adjust without problems.
Use the KeyboardCleanTool app
Obviously, the logout method is not perfect, although it is practical and fast. We can also find ourselves with the free app KeyboardCleanTool. The app blocks all the keys on our keyboard, including the multimedia keys on the top row and Touch ID. The issue is that it doesn’t disable the trackpad, which is obvious considering we’ll need some way to unlock the keyboard again.
To be able to use the app we will have to include it in the white list in System Preferences> Security and privacy> Privacy. We will click on the padlock in the upper left corner of the screen and authenticate ourselves. Then we will go to the Accessibility section and check the box next to KeyboardCleanTool.
This way we can use the app to lock the keyboard without having to log out. It is even an interesting app as a precaution, if we have children and cats at home.
