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Replace macbook pro keyboard

I recently had to change the keyboard in my macbook pro because I spilt one too many drinks on it and there’s a real lack of information online about doing it. I bought the new keyboard on ebay for about £40 and it came from Hong Kong. My macbook is actually a UK one but the keyboard I purchased was american, it works fine though! Whilst it is a fairly simple process, it’s always a bit more reassuring when you can see step by step online.

Reasons for replacing the keyboard in a macbook pro:

One or more keys are no longer working

You have spilt drink on the keyboard and its playing up

Warning: Sorry for the quality of the pictures, they were taken on a cell phone. You may break your macbook doing this and I will not accept responsibility. Do this at your own risk!

Step 1

You should start by removing the battery and closing the lid of the macbook. Next, use a small screwdriver (as used on eye glasses) to remove all the screws around the side of the case. Where the battery normally sits you will find two screws going through to the outer case, remove these. You must also use a torx driver(star) to remove the cover which sits over the RAM and remove screws under this as well.

Once you have removed all these screws the case should begin to break apart fairly easily. You may find that you need to apply some pressure to the front of the case to brake it apart, this is a little scary but shouldn’t damage it.

Step 2

You can see in the picture above the orange cable coming from the motherboard to the keyboard. You need to peel back the sticky tape on the motherboard which covers this cable and then simply pull it off gently. You will now have the keyboard and whole top of the laptop seperate to the motherboard, monitor and bottom case.

Step 3

You will find some black tape over the whole back side of the keyboard, you need to remove all of this to get access to the many screws. Take care here not to damage the orange cable running from the keyboard.

Step 4

Once you have removed all the tape you will have access to the many screws holding the keyboard in place. I didn’t count how many screws there were but I’d guess it was about 12, they’re all easy to see.

Step 5

Once you have removed the screws holding the keyboard to the top case you will need to remove the silver ribbon cable which sits next to the orange one as seen in the image above. Where you see the silver cable going onto the circuit board you simply need to pull it out gently. The keyboard isn’t held in purely by the screws, it has little clips around each edge. I used a small flat head screwdriver to pull the clips out of the holding places on the top case. Take care not to damage any cables when doing this.

Step 6

Insert the new keyboard and try to make sure it all clips in properly on each edge. Then insert the original screws to hold the keyboard to the top case. The next part is to push the gray cable back into the circuit board bit. This is a bit tricky but you simply need to push it as far into the slot you original pulled it out of as possible. Next I reconnected the orange cable from step 2 and booted up the laptop from the power cable just to make sure the new keyboard was plugged in correctly and working.