MacBook won't turn on? Here's what to try first

You press the power button and nothing happens. No picture, no sound, no fan. That looks worse than it often is: a MacBook showing no sign of life has frequently just not received any power, or it is running fine and you simply cannot see it. Below are the steps in the order we work through them ourselves, so the cheapest causes drop out first.

First: is it actually working?

One of the most common misunderstandings is a MacBook that starts up perfectly while the screen stays dark. Turn the room lights off, hold a torch or your phone light against the screen at an angle and look closely. If you can faintly make out a desktop or a login screen, the computer is running and the backlight is the problem. That is a very different repair from a dead board, and usually a cheaper one.

Watch for the other signs of life too: does the keyboard backlight flash, can you feel the fan spin, do you hear the startup chime, does the case get warm? If you have one, connect an external monitor. If a picture appears there, the board and the graphics chip are working fine and the fault is in the lid assembly.

Step by step, what you can do yourself

1. Plug the charger in and wait. A battery that has been run completely flat sometimes responds to nothing at all for half an hour. So leave it on the charger properly before looking further.
2. Try another cable and adapter. Cables fail at the strain relief and adapters deliver less current after a few years. On a MagSafe model, check whether the light comes on: that is direct proof power is arriving.
3. Try every USB-C port. A single dead port is more common than people think, and the other three will still work.
4. Unplug everything. Dongles, hubs, external drives, a second monitor: one failed peripheral can stop the machine booting. Disconnect it all except the charger.
5. Hold the power button for ten seconds, release it, then press it again briefly. On Apple Silicon models, holding the button brings up the startup options screen; if that appears, the board is healthy.
6. On an older Intel MacBook, reset the system controller: shut it down, hold left Control, left Option and right Shift for seven seconds, add the power button for another seven seconds, release everything and start up again.

What it usually turns out to be

• The charger or the cable. Surprisingly often the whole story, and you only find out when you try one you know to be good.
• The battery. Worn out or swollen, it can no longer deliver the peak current needed to start up. If the MacBook no longer sits flat on the table, or the trackpad has stopped clicking, that is almost certainly a swollen battery — stop charging and using it.
• The backlight circuit or the screen's flex cable. The torch test above points at this one.
• A power rail on the logic board. Usually after liquid, or after a surge from a poor adapter. This is the most serious category, but even here the whole board does not automatically have to go.

When to stop trying immediately

Has anything been spilled on the MacBook, even days ago and even if it seemed to keep working afterwards? Switch it off, leave it off, and do not try turning it on to see whether it is all right. As long as there is voltage on a board with moisture between its layers, corrosion eats through the traces and the damage grows by the hour. Rice and a hairdryer remove nothing. Bring it in as soon as you can; with liquid damage, speed is the only thing that genuinely helps.

The same goes for a bulging case: never puncture a swollen battery and do not keep charging it.

What we do

At Blue Apple in Amsterdam Zuid we first measure whether power is arriving and where it stops, before saying anything about the board. That diagnosis is free and you hear the price and a realistic turnaround before we start. If the board is the cause, we repair at component level: we trace the failure back to the part causing it and replace that, rather than writing off an entire board. That is not only cheaper — your own board stays in the machine, and with it, in most cases, your drive and your data.

If you can no longer make a backup yourself, say so straight away. We will then look at whether we can secure the data before starting the repair. We cannot guarantee that, and we would rather say so beforehand than after.

In short

Leave it on a charger you know is good for half an hour, unplug every peripheral, do the torch test and try an external monitor. If that gets you nowhere, come by Rijnstraat 76-H for a free diagnosis, or look at the prices per MacBook model first. If liquid was involved, do not wait — that is the one situation where delay really does make a difference.