RoamingGecko

So, someone spilled what looked to be coke on one of the Apple keyboards in one of my labs on campus. There may be a way to take these keyboards apart but after about five minutes of looking for a way to do that I decided to give a rumor I heard a go. Washing the keyboard in a dishwasher.

With the keyboard already written off, I had spares, I didn’t prep it in any way. I just placed it on the top shelf of the dish washer, added a little soap, and ran the dishwasher on the “Normal” setting. I stopped the dishwasher before it got to the heat cycle as I was fairly sure that if the keyboard made it through the wash the plastic used on the keyboard most assuredly would not survive the heat cycle the washer uses to the dry dishes.

After I took it out of the dishwasher I shook as much water out of it as I could and then I put the keyboard out in the sun for a day to dry. The next day I plugged it back in and it works perfectly. Keys no longer stick and every key input works. Just to be sure this wasn’t a fluke, I did the process all over again with a second keyboard that had sticky keys. The second keyboard works as well.

So, if you have a sticky keyboard and have nothing left to lose, give it a shot. It worked for me.