How To Clean Your Keyboard

Your keyboard is the PC peripheral you'll be most hands-on with, after your mouse. Here's how you can keep it clean.

Your keyboard is probably the second most used peripheral on your PC, after the mouse - or trackpad, if you're using a laptop. And so, it's probably going to need quite a bit of regular cleaning. The key caps are of course, the most obvious part requiring cleaning, but you'll also need to focus on the base below them too.

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However, different types of keyboards will require different types of cleaning methods, depending on whether you have a mechanical keyboard, membrane keyboard, or a laptop keyboard. Regardless, you need to keep where you work and play clean, so here's how you can keep your keyboards looking brand new.

Despite being the most complicated of the three types of keyboards mentioned above, mechanical keyboards are the easiest to clean. This is mostly down to the keycaps being removable. Removing the keycaps should be easy enough, you can use a keycap puller or just carefully do it by hand.

Make sure you take a picture of your keyboard, so you know where everything goes back.

Since the keycaps are usually made of plastic, they should be easy enough to clean with a microfiber cloth and some cleaning alcohol. If you have black colured keycaps, they may look clean, but trust me, they are not. So, you're better off giving them a wipe down anyway.

Now to the base of the keyboard. The space between the switches will undoubtedly be littered with dust, skin particles, hair, and probably some food crumbs. Simply brush these away using a cleaning brush, like the one mentioned in the box below.

The Hagibis Cleaning Soft Brush is a great tool to keep your keyboard clean. It features long bristles that can reach the base even while the keycaps are on. It also includes a keycap puller and a tool to help you clean tight spaces as well.

Once you get the loose particles out of the way, you'll probably notice that there's still some gunk stuck at the bottom, probably from that time you spilled a bit of coffee or soda. Since there isn't too much space between the keys, you're going to have to dip the cotton swabs in the cleaning alcohol and work your way across the keyboard. You can use the above brush without removing the keycaps, just for daily cleaning.

A membrane keyboard is unfortunately not as easy to clean, primarily because you can't remove the keys unless you take the entire thing apart. The keys going to have to stay in place, making it hared to clean the base. Also, depending on the design of the keyboard, dust and dirt may even go inside the keyboard due to the openings for the keys.

In this case, you'll have to use the brush on the outside at first, followed by a tedious procedure of using the cotton swab, without any cleaning alcohol fall into the openings. Other than that, you can also use a can of compressed air to blow the dirt off your keyboard. However, this will not clean it entirely on its own.

If you're well versed enough to entirely open your membrane keyboard up, you'll be able to clean the outer covering with a microfiber cloth and cleaning alcohol, and use the dust blower on the circuitry.

Cleaning the keyboard of your laptop is going to be the toughest of the three. For one, the keys are quite thin, making it easy for dirt to get inside, and secondly, you can't really open up a laptop - unless you really know what you're doing.

It's best if you use surface level cleaning, but try to ensure you don't sweep the dust into the openings. Using a can of compressed air, and then the cotton swabs with alcohol is the ideal approach to cleaning your laptop keyboard.

NEXT: Best Gaming Mouse

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Vaspaan Dastoor is a News Editor for TheGamer. Previously worked at IGN India and constantly tries to get people to make time for an LOTR marathon. He can be found giving hot takes for cold responses at @DastoorVaspaan