![]() They cost about 15 bucks and fit nicely in a drawer until needed. My personal work-around and suggestion: In keeping with the "no-cables-allowed" theme (I almost certainly suffer from some degree of undiagnosed OCD), a little 2.4 GHz RF-wireless keyboard/mouse combo is a great solution.If you're in a similar situation, you'll want to have a USB keyboard and/or mouse handy. The shelf is such that I can't open my laptop without removing it, which is a significant nuisance requiring me to unplug everything, log in, and plug everything back in. That is, I keep it closed and tucked away on a shelf beside my desk and use external monitors with BT peripherals. However, I use my laptop more like a desktop when I'm at home. Neither of these is not a problem if you can easily use the built in keyboard and mouse on your laptop. Thus, you must run BTE and repeat the steps outlined here (except downloading and installing, obviously) in order to re-activate your dongle after every reboot. macOS WILL NOT DEFAULT TO THE EXTERNAL DONGLE AFTER RESTARTING YOUR COMPUTER.The re-pairing process only needs to be done once, and they will be remembered. YOU WILL LOSE BT CONNECTIVITY IN THE INITIAL SETUP PROCESS AND ALL DEVICES WILL NEED TO BE RE-PAIRED (paired again, that is).I should mention two important details here: Operating System: macOS Sierra (v10.12.5)ĪDDENDUM, Important if you rely on Bluetooth keyboards and/or mouses:.Computer: Macbook Pro (Mid-2012 non-Retina 13-inch).A surprisingly low percentage of those offered on Amazon even attempt to claim that they work with Mac. There are others out there, but I can't speak to their compatibility with Apple products.Dongle: Kinivo BTD-300 (~11 USD on Amazon).The following steps detail the exact steps I took, and they worked just fine for me. I have no idea if is compatible with, and I obviously take no responsibility for your actions, should you go about breaking things (though that seems extremely unlikely this isn't exactly neurosurgery). I've tried to be as thorough as possible and have included essentially everything I know about the subject. I’m rather busy, so please understand if I don’t respond very quickly to questions/comments. The actual process takes less than a minute once the software is downloaded, but I'm a firm believer in the idea that the more you understand what you're doing, the less likely you are to run into problems or need additional assistance. I recognize this tutorial is rather long-winded, but the vast majority of it is just explanations, observations, and suggestions. Cheers.ĭISCLAIMER: I am neither a technician nor customer support specialist I’m just an end-user sharing my personal experience. Hopefully this saves someone from the headaches I experienced. I'm now able to use my mouse without having to place it on the wrong side of my desk in order for it to be close enough to my PC and can even comfortably connect my bluetooth headphones (something I'd given up entirely), and wear them out of the room. What is the use of wireless devices if one must shut them off, restrict said features, or move them away from the location that they’re needed?Īs an aside, I have no idea why Apple decided to put their Bluetooth card, Wifi card, and USB 3.0 ports within the same couple-square-inches of one another, but I felt like if any interference was to blame for the abysmal range of my peripherals, it was likely on the inside of the Macbook itself - not much I could do about that. In the age of wireless routers, multi-device users, and smart homes flaunting myriad other electronics, many of the suggestions I found were wildly impractical or simply unrealistic. It definitely was not going to bring about the 10-20x increase I needed just to get into the ballpark of what I would consider acceptable. At best, such efforts *might* have helped with unstable hot-spots or fluctuating connection strength - in theory, they may have even added a couple feet to the coverage radius - but it was hard to tell if that was just anamolous good luck or a result of my efforts. Desktop advice is approximately useless to us laptop owners, and several attempts at reducing interference produced minimal results. Web searches almost exclusively turned up almost guides for Mac Pro (the desktops) or some long-winded crap about how to minimize RF interference. I was getting absolutely horrendous range (< 3 feet) on ALL of my devices but only when they were paired to my Mac. There seems to be a lot of people trying to figure out how to accomplish this seemingly simple task, but not that many offering working solutions, so I decided to add to the cause. Background: After much searching and digging through outdated forums and support threads (usually peppered with snide, and unhelpful commentary), I managed to successfully set-up a Bluetooth dongle on my Macbook.
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