What to do when you you spill liquid on your MacBook

Sometimes it’s best not to do things in a hurry. Like absent-mindedly picking a glass up and pouring a pint of water all over your MacBook. Now obviously I’d never be so stupid as to do that, would I? Errrr, well yes, sadly it appears I am.

If you do have the misfortune of pouring liquids into your MacBook, you need to act very very quickly. Immediately pull out the power cable and take the battery out. And I mean immediately. Don’t bother with the niceties of trying to shut it down properly, as during that time water is creeping towards the really expensive stuff in your laptop.

Then immediately turn the computer over and try to dab the worse of the liquid with tissue paper. If it’s just water, things aren’t looking so bad. If it’s wine, coffee, or coke life will get messy. Take the top cover off the laptop and make sure no liquid has penetrated inside the case. If it has, you need to remove the excess with tissue paper, then try to wash it with a cotton bud dipped in some rubbing alcohol or distilled water. Then put the laptop in an airing cupboard or strong direct light for a long while to evaporate any excess liquid.

Most of the liquid will have entered into the keyboard, so you need to make sure it’s all evaporated before trying to reattach it. Leave it on a radiator for a few hours or days.

When you’re confident all the liquid has been removed, reattach and see all the keys still function. You can use Keyboard Viewer to check each and every key. If you’re really lucky they’ll all work fine. If your not, you’ll have to replace the keyboard.

Sadly I wasn’t lucky, so I’ll be be repairing my damaged MacBook keyboard using Sweet-Apple’s Mac hardware repair service later on this week…