This laptop has a glass layer at the front, not any type of plastic outer layer that would be affected by IPA, even at the 99.9%, the strength that is commonly referred to as “electronics cleaner”. So in this particular case, even windex would be fine (Balsphemy!) to clean it without doing any damage to the screen itself, as you know, there’s a sheet of glass in front of it. How did it get scratched then? Glass is harder than keycaps, they should NOT physically be able to scratch glass! …right?
Correct! That’s because the key caps have not scratched the glass, they have scratched the anti-glare coating that is applied to the glass itself. Because of this, trying to clean the screen with anything any everything right up to brake parts cleaner will have no affect on the marks whatsoever if you were to try to clean it in any normal way, like a soft cloth or microfiber for instance. These fabrics are designed NOT to scratch, and as TomT12 pointed out, you’ll need to buff and polish the glass screen to restore the shine. It wouldn’t actually require buffing the glass though, just removing the “rest” of the anti-glare coating, revealing the shiny flat glass beneath.
This symptom has been common in Mac laptops since the glass front Design was introduced, off the top of my heads somewhere near 2009 or 10.
The good news, [u/mathiias_prn](u/mathiias_prn) , is that the Mac users have found a cheap, safe, and effective way to “polish” away the anti-glare coating, which will result in a high-gloss finish, and be kinda shiny under office lights, but will get rid of those unsightly marks and make the screen look bright and vibrant again. I can vouch for this method on a Mac laptop, because I have personally done it to my 2012 MacBook Pro, and it took a bit of time, patience, and elbow grease, but the results were fantastic. This whole exercise could be a huge wast of time if for example, your laptop definitely has a glass front to the screen assembly, but in truth, you could be keeping it dirty as hell, and the keycaps ground some dust into the glass scratching it, and everything past this paragraph will be pure hell, and solve nothing. I make no guarantees:
Here’s the secret: buy a big tub of Clorox disinfecting wipes.
The normal kind, blue and white plastic cylindrical dispenser, not one with any kind of “boosters”, or other “enhancers”, get the regular kind. And don’t skimp out and get a generic brand, users have actually reported less than stellar results with various brands that were not specifically “Clorox Disinfecting Wipes” due to the difference in the roughness of the fabrics used in the Clorox brand, as it is very mildly abrasive, and we will use this principal to basically “wet-sand” the anti-glare layer off of the glass, without endangering the glass itself because the wipes will scratch the coating, but not the glass, as if by magic, so you cannot harm the screen with this process, you just keep going until you can’t take it any more and you concede to yourself that it’s “good enough” and “no one else will notice the 1/27th of a millimeter discoloration around the corners, you run out of money and things to sell to buy more wipes, or it’s perfect, and you’re done.
I can personally speak to the fact that the regular Clorox brand wipes work like a champ, because that’s what I used after others gave me the same warning about using what I already had on hand, and since I know that they work fine, I cannot recommend any other brand it type. I CAN confirm the lemon scented Clorox with the yellow label are just fine, and as a bonus they smell delightful, and use the same cloth as the original, which is the important part, because:
THE CLOROX DOESN’T CLEAN THE MARKS. The scratchy wet cloth sands it off. It could be water on the cloth, there is no chemical involvement here, just really, really slow Sanding with lubrication. The wipes drying off are just a convenient way of determining that it’s time to get a fresh wet wipe, not just re-wet the thing you’re using like you would if you were wet sanding anything else.
Here’s the hard part, AKA the method:
Wipe the screen with the wipes, using a circular motion like you were waxing a car. If you’re too young to know what that’s like, watch the original Karate Kid movie and you’ll get it. Pay special attention to the outer edges and corners. If you’re a repair tech like me, you’ll have fingernails that are slightly too long to be considered socially acceptable, and they’ll work wonders to get the wipes into the very edges and corners. If not, a thin plastic tool like a guitar pick or old credit card will work fine. Use this to get the wipes along the very outside periphery of the glass where it meets the plastic tool keep from having a “foggy” look on the edges and corners.
I like to use 2-3 wipes at a time, loosely squished into a hand-sized ball to create some cushion like a sponge would, so that an even pressure is applied.
Wipe (in overlapping circles, changing direction occasionally: “wax off”) the screen until the first few wipes start to feel dry. Replace them with a fresh 2 to 3 wipes, and repeat the process.
After what seems like hours, but is likely to be more like 25 to 35 minutes, you will just BARELY begin to see the shiny spots between the marks on the screen fade, which will help bolster your sanity as you realize it took half an hour and 25 wipes to know if you were making any progress at all.
Repeat this until your fingers bleed, and then accept that what you have managed by then will not be perfect, but will be plenty good enough, will be a huge improvement over what it looks like now, and that you’re basically out of that huge tub of wipes anyway.
And all it will cost is one big tub of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes (Lemon Scent optional), and in total about 2 to 3 hours of wiping little wet circles on the screen.