Can I make OS X avoid hunting for my bluetooth mouse & keyboard?

October 13, 2014 10:06 PM

OS X on my MacBook Pro is doing what it's supposed to do: Trying to connect with my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I'd like it to not do that when my MacBook isn't connected to my Thunderbolt display. Is there any way to automate this?

Basically, this is me being supremely lazy:

When I disconnect my MacBook from the display and carry it downstairs, the keyboard and mouse are still kind-of-sort-of in Bluetooth range. As a result, I'm constantly getting distracting connect/disconnect messages.

The canonical answer to the problem would seem to be "just turn off Bluetooth when using the MacBook away from the desk/display," but I'd love it if there were some way to automate the disconnect/reconnect because I frequently redock, forget to turn Bluetooth back on, and find myself twiddling the mouse or poking at the keyboard waiting for the clamshelled machine to wake up and start working again. Then I have to pull it out from under the monitor, open it up, go back to the Bluetooth prefs, and turn it back on again.

I know this is mildly ridiculous, but I'm o.k. spending ~2 percent of my annual question allotment on the problem.

posted by mph to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Try ControlPlane - you can set contexts (ex: "Upstairs" vs "Downstairs") and can switch them automatically based on an 'evidence source', including a connected monitor. So you could set the context to change to downstairs when the monitor is disconnected, and trigger an action that turns off bluetooth.
posted by suedehead at 10:43 PM on October 13, 2014

Yeah ControlPlane works beautifully for this. I have the same situation though was not bothered enough to ask a question.

I created two contexts: Thunderboltconnected and Thunderboltaway. They each have identical rules of an attached Thunderbolt monitor but the latter one has the negation box checked.

Then, under Actions there's a ToggleBlueTooth Action. Assign the Action with parameter 0 (off) to Thunderboltaway and with parameter 1 (on) to connected and you're done.

Thanks suedehead!
posted by vacapinta at 2:15 AM on October 14, 2014

Thanks, suedehead & vacapinta. That'll do what I asked for!
posted by mph at 8:30 AM on October 14, 2014