“If you’re having serious issues with a connected peripheral device like a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse, you should know that there’s a special menu option buried beneath the Bluetooth symbol near the top-right of your screen,” Melissa Holt reports for The Mac Observer.
“If you’re missing that icon, you can get it to appear there by visiting System Preferences > Bluetooth and checking ‘Show Bluetooth in menu bar,'” Holt reports. “Once you can see it, here’s the trick. If you hold down Shift-Option and then click on the icon, you’ll get a ‘Debug’ menu to appear.”
Holt reports, “Hidden under that “Debug” option are a few very useful choices.”
Read more about OS X’s Bluetooth Debug Menu, and see the screenshots, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The ability to perform a factory reset on individual Bluetooth devices is an extremely useful tool.
YES
Thanks for posting this. For the past 3-4 months I’ve been having an issue with my Mighty Mouse constantly disconnecting and reconnecting.
I’ll give this a whirl now.
I had an issue like that. It turned out to be an issue with the battery springs. I solved it by putting a small piece of paper underneath each battery.
RastaMouse…. I am right there with you. Very frustrating… I cannot wait to get home and try this.
Useful article.
I wish Apple would stop hiding features. There is no reason that everything should require an “option-click” in order to access all the possible inputs. For items in the menu bar, why can’t the user open a fully-enabled control panel using a single click??? Forcing complex keystrokes to access information and controls is so Microsoftian.
But let’s say you finally did discover the way to the bluetooth debug panel. How does one know which command to choose? There is no description for what EXACTLY each does. So if you click on “Factory reset all connected Apple devices”, you get a pop-up warning declaring that you can’t undo what you are doing — which of course Apple didnt’ tell you, not in the panel, not in the help menu, nowhere., The whole process looks like it was written by a former microsoft employee.
So, bottom line, if you ever do any debugging or change any settings on a Mac today, you have to go online to the support forums to figure out what other people have determined happens before one can safely proceed on his own. You certainly could screw yourself if you blindly change a few settings while you’re working remotely/offline.
THIS IS JUST ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF GUI MEDIOCRITY COMING OUT OF CUPERTINO THESE DAYS.
I agree 100%.
Evidently, on this board if you are critical of the new GUI or the direction TC & JI are going you get down voted.
People here just dont want to admit things aren’t right in Cupertino these days.
I’ve had the same MicroSlothian opinion since it was changed that to create a new folder, you HAVE to hold down an extra key. Now, you have to hold the Option Key to keep an expanding window from taking over the whole damn screen. The ability to “control” something as simple as a folder expansion has been but one of the reasons I went back to the previous OSX version.
Sure Mike, why doesn’t Apple just make the default desktop look something like this:
Sorry to hear that you are so unhappy with Apple. Why not go over to Ubuntu or Chrome and quit complaining. I have been using Apple Macs since 1985 and occasionally have to use Windows. I have had very little problems with MacOS or OS X and never needed these little tricks because “It just works.” for me.
I wonder where the true mediocrity is coming out of? Do you have a triple digit IQ?
I swapped my wired mouse for somebody else’s Magic Mouse a year ago. Maintaining a connection has been a nightmare. Now, after following these instructions, so far-so good! Here’s hoping!
Isn’t it about time that Apple published a power-user’s cheat sheet documenting such goodies? I know a fair number myself but this one was new to me—and a welcome addition to the arsenal.
=:~)
Works on the WiFi icon as well.
This didn’t work for crap on my 2010 iMac that I’ve been struggling with since then. Bluetooth is intermittent.
Oh well.
I gave up on Apple mice some time ago. You might want to try a MacAlley Bumper Mouse (it is wired though).
There has been an issue with it waking up the computer but on my iMac I put it into a hub and on my wife’s Macbook Pro she plugs it in directly to the computer. The mouse costs $20 and is good enough to play Call of Duty games
I keep Bluetooth on the same wish list as I keep Microsoft:
My “It Must DIE!” List. 😕
You just need to hold the Option (⌥) key. Shift-Option is not necessary, at least as of MacOS Sierra.