Sell a MacBook with a keyboard that repeats, sticks or has given up.
The butterfly years produced a lot of these. It is a known fault with a known price, and Apple's free repair programme has now closed.
R0 million+ already paid out by Epic Deals
Between roughly 2015 and 2019 Apple shipped the butterfly keyboard, and it failed in a specific, recognisable way: keys that repeat themselves, keys that stick, keys that stop registering, usually triggered by a speck of dust nobody could see. Apple ran a free repair programme for it for years.
That programme has now closed for most machines, which is why this page exists. A great many MacBooks are still out there with the fault and owners who assume it makes them worthless. It does not. It is one of the best-understood faults in the second-hand Mac market and it prices accordingly.
The awkward part is honest: on those models the keyboard is bonded into the top case with the battery, so replacing it is a large repair. That is priced in, and it is still a smaller number than most owners fear.
Check these first.
Which keys, and what they do
Repeating, sticking and dead are three different symptoms and it helps to say which. Type a full alphabet into a note and see what actually happens rather than describing it from memory.
Check whether yours is butterfly or scissor
Apple returned to a scissor mechanism, branded Magic Keyboard, from 2019 onward. A faulty scissor keyboard is a different and generally cheaper problem than a butterfly one, so knowing which you have is worth two minutes of looking up your model year.
Try it after a proper clean first
Compressed air held at an angle, in the pattern Apple published for this, genuinely fixes a proportion of sticking keys. It costs nothing and a working keyboard is worth appreciably more than a faulty one.
It is the top case, not just the keyboard
On butterfly models the keyboard, battery and top case are one assembly, which is why the repair is large. Nothing you can do about it, but it explains the deduction and it is better to know than to guess.
Things that do not disqualify it.
Every one of these lowers the offer. Not one of them ends it. Describe what it actually does and the price you are shown already accounts for it.
- Keys that type themselves twice
- Keys that need a hard press to register
- Keys that do nothing at all
- A keycap that has come off or broken
- Sticky or gritty feel on one part of the keyboard
- Backlight out under some keys
- Touch Bar unresponsive or flickering
- Trackpad clicking unevenly
Three ways to get paid.
Cash
Accept the offer, hand it to the courier, and get paid by EFT within 5 working days of your confirmed offer. Tested within 1-3 working days of arriving.
Get your offer →+12% trade-in voucher
Take the payout as EpicDeals.co.za credit instead of cash and we add 12%. Worth it only if you were going to spend it, which after a fault like this most people are.
Start your trade-in →+10% on consignment
We list it, we sell it, you get 10% more than the instant offer once it goes. Most sell within 13 days.
Ask about consignment →Questions, answered honestly
Something else wrong with it?
A known fault, not a write-off.
Say which keys and get a number that already accounts for them.
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