Magic Mouse keeps disconnecting from bluetooth

Mine turned out to be bad contacts as well! I used a slim mechanical pencil's eraser to clean the recessed contacts inside the Magic Mouse as well as the spring-loaded ones, and for good measure, "erased" the ends of the batteries as well.

My guess is that the MM is highly voltage-sensitive, and slight soiling on any of the contacts creates just enough resistance to cause these spurious disconnections.

Hope so, anyway!

Thanks to all.

For me, it's the size of the battery. It seems to make the most sense based on what I've read here about people replacing the MM and also myself trying to stuff paper in the back compartment to seat the batteries more securely.

I never had a problem until I swapped out my lame-o Kodak-branded batteries for EnergizerRecharge rechargeables. The Kodak batteries never gave me a problem. When I switched to the Energizers, the mouse cut out about 20x/day and was consistent with the tapping issue that others have explained. You'd lift the mouse off the desk and then bring it down again, even if it was ever-so-gently, and it would disconnect.

I put the Kodaks back in, and no problems.

Lesson learned!

We bought the Apple Magic Mouse rechargeable battery and rarely have a problem now. I only notice occasional "skating" of the indicator arrow when I'm playing Branium Free Cell 1.0.2.

Good luck for 3 months so far on the Apple rechargeable batteries. No apparent mouse disconnects, and I care a lot less about the battery life...

I was having the same problem with my mouse disconnecting. I have 3 different types of rechargeable batteries AND regular double AAs. ALL of them disconnected. I typed in the problem and found this forum. I went to the mac store to buy their batteries and told them the issue. They DENIED it. They said it works fine with all batteries. I couldn't believe how snobby they were. It seems that Apple has lost its way. They don't listen to the customer. One of the guys told me, why are you using it? I purchased a mac in March of 2013. If I would have known what jerks they are, I'm not sure I would have made the decision to buy a macbook. It's all good now, but these are serious warning signs for the future of this company in my book. Anyhow.. I paid the $29 for their batteries and now it works fine. I noticed that the head of the Apple recheargable batteries are a little wider than the heads of all my other double AAs. This makes me pretty sure that this was an INTENTIONAL design so that we also have to purchase the mac batteries. I don't mind paying more for the magic mouse... just be upfront about it instead of finding cheap ways to trick the customer. After the apple guy told me that my problem didn't exist, I loaded up the forums... and opened it up on all the macs in the store. Then he pointed at the date... (I found one from 2011).. and he told me that the issue had been resolved. What a load of crap.

I was having this same problem and it was progressively getting worse until I wrapped my batteries with a folded sticky note to make them fit more snugly in the battery compartment. I haven't had a problem since.

I posted this in June and it still stands:

It is just bad contact.

I sandpapered both ends of the batteries. Then I scratched with a tiny, sharp flathead screwdriver both contacts inside the mouse: the sprung negative one and the recessed positive one. The mouse worked like a charm and has not failed since. It will likely work for you too, and it works with any batteries and any operating system...good luck !

I had a problem which also suggests the MM is voltage sensitive. About 4 months after purchase the mouse had been working fine on the supplied batteries. I got an onscreen warning that batteries were low, and put in a pair of Duracells from a previously unopened pack. The mouse kept cutting out - disconnecting and no green light. I tried another pair of batteries from the same pack, and had the same problem. I then contacted Apple Support who sent out a new mouse the next day. It came without batteries so I put in the same Duracells I had been trying on the old mouse - had exactly the same intermittentent disconnection. At which point the penny dropped and I tried a pair of Duracells from a newer unopened pack which I had just bought the week before. Both old and new mice worked fine.

I returned the new mouse to Apple, and two weeks on the old mouse continues to work fine on the newer batteries. I checked voltages and the batteries from the older pack gave 1.47 volts, and those from the newer pack 1.58 volts.

I used a business card. Folded it in half, trimmed the edge, stuck the folded edge between the batteries, then folded the ends on top. Put the cover back on and - Voilà! - No more disconnects.

Unfortunatly since Steve Jobs...we're in the windows world!

I removed the back plate and the problems went away.

The problems were slow, sticky magic mouse tracking and a loss of bluetooth connection every 5 minutes or so in all applications.

OS 10.7.5 Mac Pro Nehalem 8GB

Haven't had a single problem since removing the back plate (3 days).

The other unsuccessful things I had tried were paper inside the back plate to tighten the battery fit, and deleting the bluetooth devices and re-pairing. I did not try resetting things like PRAM or SMC or a using a different magic mouse.

My experience, having explored this issue with 4 Magic Mice and four macs (First intel Mac Pro (1,1), latest Mac Pro (6,1), First MacBook Pro with Retina, 15" (10,1) and older MacBook Pro (4,1)), is as follows:

• I never had a problem until I changed the batteries in the mouse from the ones Apple supplied
• While I had some disconnections on all systems, they were much more common using any of the mice with the older Macs, particularly the old Mac Pro)
• I could improve the situation by wrapping the batteries in paper or adding foil at the contacts, or both, but that didn't completely solve the problem
• All four of my mice seemed to behave in very similar ways
• The problem only occurs with some brands of batteries.

When I started noting what batteries I was using, I found that the problem only arose using particular brands of battery, primarily Duracell. If I stick to either Apple Rechargables or ordinary Energizer AA batteries, I never get a disconnection.

I think the fundamental problem is that some batteries are smaller than Apple designed for, and those ones lead to intermediate disconnections. But their bluetooth implementations shipped in Macs have improved over time and the newer ones are less sensitive to very short bluetooth interruptions and don't lead to a loss of connection.

The bottom line is, whatever the various underlying problems are, finding the right kind of battery and sticking to it has eliminated the problem completely for every mouse I've tried with in combination with every Mac I've paired them with.

njr0 your message suggests an aspect I hadn't considered before - materials incompatibility. Some metals like tin, develop an insulating oxide layer that stops the current flow across connections. To get around this you can push the two contact materials together harder, or move the pieces to break the oxide layer.

I wonder if these two issues are what we are seeing. Making the batteries move to re-establish the connection suggests that the contact forces are weak because of a weak spring force, and that the oxide needs to be cleared by moving the battery tip across the spring power terminal.

Different battery brands would have different metalurgy, suggesting different degrees of compatibility at the battery tip.

@coreyem: Thanks for this post. This approach fixed my mouse as well. It must be a design issue that the positive end is too deep, and thus normal battery cannot make solid connections all the time. It has been so frustrating that I have to smash it every a few minutes since I started to use this mouse. With this "battery fix" trick, everything is so perfect now.

I had disconnect issues and thought it was a bluetooth problem . But it seems it was that my rechargables were getting dirty so i polished both ends and the mouse parts so a good connection was made. Now no more problems. Something to try first.