I would like to turn off my Macbook Air in order to clean the keyboard and not repeatedly press buttons. However, when pressing any button, the MacBook immediately turns on again.
Is there any way to disable this behavior, so that for example only the unmarked button in the top right turns it on?
Open a text editor, save a new file called Cleaning_My_Keyboard.md ...and clean away!
This will allow you to clean your keyboard with all the depressed keys being "swallowed" by the document which you can then Trash when done.
Yes, exactly what I meant. No need to save the file unless you want to try track trends on the dirtiest / most used keys. Also, clean one key at a time to avoid combo shenanigans.
I finally found something that somewhat works and is easy to do!
It isn't identical to having the computer off as some of the keys still register, but because the mac is locked they really don't do anything and even when you press them the screen stays dark enough to see the smudges!
Log out
It will render most keys and actions useless (opening Music when pressing Play/Pause)
After comments…
KeyboardCleanTool (freeware) is ideal for this. It disables the entire keyboard, though not the mouse/trackpad. Click to start, click to stop.
I find this annoying as hell. It would have been better that just the TouchID button would have turned it on.
Anyway, what I do is locking it so that it unlocks just with TouchID and then proceed in cleaning the keyboard, since just some FN keys will actually do something in this state, namely brightness & volume.
You can turn off the Mac using the power button or the Terminal (sudo shutdown -h now).
This prevents the keys from turning on the Mac. The only disadvantage, as soon as you accidentally press the power button, it starts.
Another option is to run third-party software that blocks accidental keystrokes, such as Keyboard Clean Tool.
command + shift + Q - lock your screen is the best answer to clean your Mac
