Dust-Off
Ten ounce cans
Compressed Gas Duster, 10 oz
★★★★☆4.3 from 2,867 ratings
$4.50$0.45 an ounce of gas
A single standard can that sits by the workbench or rests in a desk drawer until keys stick or a tower fan gathers gray lint.
By the gear
Keyboards and laptops
Crumbs under the switches, hair along the seams, and the gray felt that builds up in a laptop hinge.
Get under the keycaps, not over them
Aim along the row rather than straight down. A stream pointed into the gap carries crumbs sideways and out. A stream pointed at the top of a keycap pushes them further in.
Tilt the board, not the can
Stand the keyboard on its long edge and work down the rows so gravity is on your side. The can itself stays upright the whole time.
Then a cloth for the tops
Blowing clears the gaps and does nothing for the shine on the keys you use most. That mark is skin oil, and it comes off with a cloth or a wipe.
Laptops take a lighter hand
A laptop keyboard sits directly over the board, and the fan intake is often a slot on the same face. Short taps at an angle, with the machine off and closed at the hinge if you can manage it, keep dust from being pushed straight into the case.
The hinge slot itself is worth the straw. That is where the felt collects, and the wide stream mostly goes past it.
Mechanical boards
A board with tall keycaps has more room underneath and hides more. It also takes a long straw well, since there is a real channel between the rows for the stream to travel along.
Pull the caps if the board is deep enough to need it, but for the weekly pass the can does the job without disassembly.