Kleanly

Kleanly is a small macOS utility for MacBook owners who want to clean their machine without shutting it down. It lives in the notch of your MacBook, and with a single tap it disables your keyboard and trackpad so you can wipe everything down safely. To start a cleaning session you hover the Kleanly control beside your MacBook notch and press play; to finish, you simply double-tap the trackpad to exit. Kleanly is built for anyone who wants a spotless keyboard and display — from people who clean their keyboard regularly to parents who hand their Mac to a child. The problem Kleanly addresses is one almost every MacBook owner has run into: you want to clean your keyboard, but you cannot easily do it while the Mac is running. Turning the machine off just to wipe the keys is inconvenient, and leaving it on means your screen ends up a mess as stray keystrokes and trackpad gestures fire while you clean. Worse, those accidental inputs can send random messages or trigger shortcuts you did not intend. Kleanly removes that dilemma entirely. Instead of powering down, you temporarily disable input with one tap, clean freely, and then exit with a double-tap when you are done. The result is a clean Mac without interruptions. The core of Kleanly is its input lock. With just a tap, Kleanly lets you disable your keyboard and trackpad. The control sits beside your MacBook notch, and pressing play on it starts the cleaning session. While the lock is active, taps, slaps and swipes on the keyboard or trackpad do nothing, which is what gives users what the product calls peace of mind: no more worrying about sending random messages or triggering shortcuts while cleaning, so you can focus on making your Mac spotless. The session ends when you double-tap your trackpad, returning normal input instantly. Because the interaction is limited to a single tap to start and a double-tap to stop, there is nothing to configure mid-clean and no risk of leaving the lock on by mistake. Kleanly also handles the display. It can display a full-screen black overlay on your screen, revealing all the dirt, fingerprints and smudges so you can see exactly what needs wiping — a black surface makes marks far more visible than whatever wallpaper or app window you were looking at. A newer capability, Keep Watching While You Clean, means your screen stays on, so a video keeps playing while you wipe down the keys. You turn on the black overlay only when it is time to clean the display, so you can clean the keyboard while continuing to watch something and then switch to the overlay for the screen itself. Together these two behaviours cover both surfaces of a MacBook: the keys you type on and the glass you look at. Several features serve specific situations. Toddler-Proof mode is designed for parents: you let the little ones watch a cartoon, and taps, slaps and swipes on the keyboard or trackpad do nothing until you double-tap to exit. No Notch? No Problem covers Macs and displays that do not have a notch — there Kleanly sits as a small tab in the menu bar instead of beside the notch. The interface itself is minimalistic and intuitive: a minimal design that stays out of your way, with no extra windows and no unnecessary clicks. For minimalists who dislike seeing extra controls, Hide the Notch Control lets you tuck the notch control out of sight between cleanings. The creator's update notes also mention in-app updates and the ability to move your license to a new Mac yourself. Overall, Kleanly works by putting a single control where MacBook users already look — the notch — and turning cleaning into a two-gesture workflow. You hover the Kleanly control beside the notch and press play to enter a locked cleaning state. In that state the keyboard and trackpad are disabled, so nothing you touch registers, while the screen can keep playing content or switch to a full-screen black overlay for display cleaning. When you are finished, a double-tap on the trackpad exits and input is restored. On machines without a notch, the same control appears as a small menu bar tab. There is no separate window to manage and no complicated setup described beyond installing the app. The benefits follow directly from that design. You get peace of mind, because you no longer worry about sending random messages or triggering shortcuts while you clean. You can keep watching while you clean, so cleaning the keyboard no longer interrupts a video. You can get a genuinely clean display, because the black overlay exposes dirt, fingerprints and smudges that would otherwise be easy to miss. Parents get a toddler-proof Mac that survives cartoon time. Users who care about the look of their software get a minimalistic interface that stays out of the way and can be hidden between cleanings. And everyone avoids the main alternative — shutting the Mac down just to wipe the keys. Concrete scenarios come straight from the product's descriptions. In the first, you are watching a video on your MacBook and want to clean the keyboard: you press play on the Kleanly control beside the notch, wipe the keys while the video keeps playing, then double-tap the trackpad to exit. In the second, it is time to clean the screen: you turn on the full-screen black overlay, which exposes all the dirt, fingerprints and smudges, wipe the display, and exit. In the third, a toddler is watching a cartoon: taps, slaps and swipes do nothing until you double-tap to exit. A fourth scenario is a Mac or display without a notch, where you use the small menu bar tab instead. Throughout, the point is cleaning without turning the machine off. Kleanly is aimed at MacBook owners generally, and especially at people who clean their keyboard and display regularly, parents who share a Mac with young children, and users who prefer minimal, well-designed software. Requirements are stated on the product page: macOS 12 (Monterey) or greater, and Macs with Intel chips are supported. Kleanly is sold as a paid one-time purchase at $14.99, with a license-key lookup for people who have already bought it. The product listing shows 58 sales and a 5-star rating from the reviews displayed, and the creator's rating is 4.9 from 12 verified reviews across other products. Buyers have described it as easy, practical and useful, and as surprisingly well designed. In short, Kleanly turns an awkward chore into a tap. By living in the notch and locking your keyboard and trackpad on demand, it lets you clean your MacBook — keys and display — without shutting it down, while videos keep playing and toddlers stay safely unproductive. It is a small, focused macOS utility whose value is exactly its narrowness: one tap to start cleaning, a double-tap to stop.