🔋 My old laptop battery is swollen, how worried should I be?

My laptop is 5 years old and over the last couple of weeks it started sitting uneven on the desk. Out of curiosity I took off the bottom panel and found the battery had swollen. Not dramatically, just enough to push against the casing from inside. It's clearly not flat anymore. Battery life has been getting worse for months too, but I'd put that down to age. I read online that a swollen battery can be a fire risk if you leave it alone. I can't tell how urgent that is in real life, or if it's the scary version people repeat. My brother says stop using it right now. I told him that sounds a bit dramatic. The laptop works fine otherwise, for browsing and documents, which is all I use it for. So part of me wants to keep using it carefully and not spend any money. I asked a repair shop near my office about a replacement battery. The quote was reasonable. I haven't booked it yet. I keep saying I'll do it next week. Then yesterday I noticed the laptop rocks slightly when I type, and that bothered me. Has anyone had an old laptop battery swell like this? Did you replace only the battery? Or did it feel like a sign that the whole machine was done? I'd like to know how urgent it really is, not just the worst case from the internet. Until I hear back I've stopped charging it overnight, which is something at least.

Kept using mine with a mildly swollen battery for almost eight months without anything going wrong, mostly out of laziness rather than any real confidence it was safe, though looking back I probably got lucky more than anything else. Would not actively recommend my own approach here, just sharing that nothing dramatic happened for me personally during that whole stretch of time.

Got mine replaced for around eighteen hundred rupees at a local shop last year once I noticed the exact same slight swelling pushing against the bottom panel, process took less than a day and the laptop has run completely normally ever since with no further issues.

Ignored a similar warning sign on my own old laptop for almost four months, told myself it was just a worst case scenario people overstate online, until the swelling cracked the trackpad slightly from the pressure building underneath.