Spicy MacBook Pro 15" Retina (Mid 2015) Battery

I’ve done a bunch of these for a repair shop. Lots of different ways suggested on line for how to do it, but what worked best for me was a wide nylon spudger tool wet with high proof alcohol. Slow and steady making sure not to puncture or fold the battery. Have a plan ready to go if it goes up in flames. We had a metal bin full of sand to toss things in to. Good luck!

Was it ever used?
Can you not still lift slightly, wrap a spludger around the end of the "glue" tape then pull outward as flat as possible with the board so it stays as close to 180 degrees as you can keep it. That's how we used to pull them out years ago. Never had issues with them tearing and such. The whole process would take 15 minutes to having the device booting back up. Maybe they changed the adhesive again after the models I'm thinking of.
- iPhone batteries can somewhat reliably be removed that way in my experience. They have a nice pull tab you can get to with tweezers. Sometimes for the laptops if it swells enough it can peel away enough of the adhesive for an easy pull too. I’ve been lucky a few times, but the ones that are stuck on good don’t tend to come easily. I hope more than anything they take the risk seriously and plan. A burning battery is terrifying.

I’ve done a number of these

Discharge the battery as much as possible

Syringe with acetone, have 2-3 ready especially if you have small syringes

Open the macbook, take the bottom off, and place it upside down so it’s it’s in a upside down V shape

Dump a bunch of acetone behind the battery with the syringe so that it pours down toward the bottom, away from keyboard. Let it sit for a minute. Apply gentle heat. Apply more acetone, let it sit.

Start to try to pry it with a spudger (gently) while squirting in acetone around where you pry. If it doesn’t budge repeat the above again. Pry and squirt, pry and squirt. Slow and steady. Keep in mind each cell pack can kind of flex around so when you get past one you kind of start over.

I used both the plastic spudgers and the thin metal kind and always preferred the latter. Plastic works and is safer but the metal kind just work better

Having a contingency plan for if it fails but I never did tbf

Edit: alternatively I remember reading about pulling a thin sharp metal string behind the battery to cut the adhesive. Like a high note piano wire. Never tried it but heard it works. You tuck it behind the battery and slowly drag it down, pulling it left to right so it cuts the adhesive. Seemed sketch to me so I never tried, like it would potentially cut into the battery?

I tried the wire method on one before and it worked well, but took FOREVER to get through. It felt riskier than the spudger method to me, so I never did it again.
- I was just always afraid that because of the inherent angle of me pulling the wire towards the battery that I would end up pulling the wire into the battery and slicing into it. I don’t know how easy it is for a wire to slice into a battery casing, I assume it’s somewhat hard, but I wasn’t trying to find out
  
  I ended up getting somewhat decent at these battery swaps though. There was a time where I could do it in like 20 minutes or so.
  
  The worst part was when someone needed a trackpad replacement haha. It wasn’t common but when it happened it was like so do you want a new battery? because I’m gonna have to do all this pain in the ass shit anyway

If you open them they're full of forbidden popcorn.

What flavor?
- Ghost pepper

Ah, a full set of throw pillows! My wife would be thrilled.

Edit: more seriously, is it normal for all the cells to fail together like that? Terrifying. Be safe OP.

Those pillow batteries tend to do that. Not sure why.

Looks so comfy, nice wrist rest you have there.

Ho, ho, hooo-ld up! This might be the spiciest pillow-picture i have ever seen!

I think I got the same model at work. I didn’t realise because I used an external keyboard and when I checked online, the battery was already replaced once. I work in a lab and was so scared I initially placed it under the chemical hood until it had no battery.

I got to take it home (much later) and ordered a repair kit from iFixit and each step was explained for dummies and it was a blast to replace it. The one downside: my first battery I ordered was also bloated and I only realised once it was glued in. But they sent a new one within days and the second one was perfect.

Yeah, I’ve followed a lot of the iFixit guides and bought tools and parts from them. Always been a good experience.