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The Trick to Properly Fixing the Rubber Feet of a MacBook Pro

A black rubber foot of my trusty old MacBook Pro finally broke off, and I didn't like how it made the laptop wobbly.  A fix was needed, and quick!

First I bought some replacement feet, the kind that just stick on.   These feet are nice because there is no need open up the machine to fix a broken foot.  They're very inexpensive, and the ones I bought have adhesive tape already applied - just peal and stick.  I bought feet like the ones found here.

I have read many complaints about how the adhesive doesn't stick, but I think that's because people don't know the two tricks required to get the new feet to stick properly.


New Feet to replace a lost Foot


Important Trick 1: Make sure to remove all remnants of the old foot - including the pieces in the hole.   My factory-installed foot was attached both mechanically and with adhesive, but when the old foot sheared off, some pieces of the old foot remained in the hole.  Those plastic bits would have prevented the new foot from seating properly.  I used tweezers to carefully break up and extract the remnants of the old foot.  Of course, never dig too deep - there are sensitive electronics under there!

Photo 1: Be sure to fully remove the old foot.

Important Trick 2: I used some solvent to soften and release the old clear adhesive tape.  I didn't even know that this adhesive tape was on the laptop body until I managed to loosen it up with some nail polish remover.  The tape is in the shape of a small transparent disk, and will prevent the new adhesive from sticking well unless the disk and all the old transparent adhesive is completely removed.  Of course, again, never let anything get into the hole.  That could do some damage.


Clean the recess very well

Whoa!  A little transparent piece of old adhesive tape appears!  Tweezers help me pull it away

Remove the old tape, and finish cleaning out the old adhesive from the recess


Once the recess was completely clean and dry, I properly aligned the new foot and stuck it in place.

Now my MacBook Pro is steady on its feet and ready for more years of computing bliss.  
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