Magic Mouse keeps disconnecting from bluetooth

Hey there guys, I have found a Solution for the Magic Mouse to stop disconnecting.

I don't know if anyone else has posted it as I only got two pages in all these posts.

I simply folded up two small peices of alfoil and placed them under each spring between each battery. I have found the Magic Mouse stops disconnecting.

The alfoil shouldn't reduce the integrity of the mouse or battery as it is a common conductor (along side copper) used in the electrical world (yes I am an electrician).

Maybe our battery sizes are a tad smaller than the ones they are tested with???

I hope this helps if there has not been a solution found yet.

It's definately the "short" AA battery problem.

I compared batteries and found sanyo eneloops were 2mm longer than everready alkalines.

Using the sanyo batteries fixed the problem - plus they're rechargable. 🙂

just wanted to post that thanks to this thread my Magic Mouse is no longer experiencing the frequent disconnects. i cleaned the contacts with acetone and a Qtip. very easy solution and completely cleared up the disconnect problem!

I guess it's pretty much academic given the number of other suggestions posted - but I randomly tried removing the battery cover and my Magic Mouse hasn't disconnected since. Before that it would disconnect about every 5 minutes - in fact I was about to junk it.

I started having problems with my magic mouse a few days ago. ( I bought it 2 years ago, and I am using it with an iMac 27). When the battery level was low, I replaced the batteries as usual.. whoa.... it was awful. opening the cover did not work for me. It disconnected after every 3-4 clicks then reconnected with a few more clicks. I read in one forum that some people felt it had something to do with metal conductivity ( see also the solution above) and so considered that perhaps it was due to my using cheap batteries and wondered if these were perhaps faulty some way, though they registered as 100% full, so I decided to put in regular brand name batteries, and lo, the problem was completely solved.

it could be a fluke but who knows, if it works it works.

Judging from the first entry in this discussion this problem has been ongoing for at least 2 years. Surely, Apple knows about it by now, and yet there seems to have been not a peep out Apple, let alone a fix. Is this Apple's idea of customer support — or did their bean counters figure that it was just cheaper to **** off their customers than acknowldge and fix the problem?? For what it's worth, I've had my 27" iMac for 15 months and this problem with the mouse only just now started. Thing is, it's not a problem with the "magic mouse" (which I don't use because I hate it), but with the "mighty mouse" I used with my older G5 — AND — another "mighty mouse" left over from my G4! Both of those mice worked flawlessly with my 27" for more than a year — until now!

Have been a loyal Mac user since my first Mac, a 128K. I just don't see any excuse for this!

I had this problem as well. I found that the "drop the mouse" action also reproducibly disconnected it from Bluetooth. I noticed that the aluminum battery door had developed a slight bow. I gently reversed the bow so that the door would allow less battery motion. This seems to have helped. Dropping no longer causes disconnects.

This worked great for me!

Thank you, one and all. After a year of flawless performance (21" iMac, Magic Mouse, bluetooth keyboard), the mouse started disconnecting continuously. I have the Apple battery charger and the six batteries that came with it. The batteries still fit fine in both the MM and the charger and the cover on the MM battery compartment was flush (not bowed). So I tried the rest of the suggestions and cleaned the ends of the batteries, the contacts in the MM and the contacts in the charger, all with (1) an eraser, (2) a green scrubby (dry), and (3) brake clean on a Q-tip. Perfection! I can now return the single-use AA batteries I borrowed from husband ...

Since I have more than one iMac and Magic Mouse, I can tell you that for me the problem has begun getting more frequent. I now have daily instances where the "disconnected" graphic shows up only to reconnect after a few clicks. Since I am on my work Mac all day long, I have noticed that this happens several times per day. Got so bad a week ago, that I decided to replace the mouse with a new one. That has not eliminated the problem and hence my search for a BlueTooth Apple mouse problem.

I use my iMac at home only about an hour a day, but getting the disconnect every day.

I wish this had a fix.

This is caused by multiple physical issues with the AA batteries and the MM battery compartment design. Biggest issue is at the ➕ tip end where the mouse battery case plastic is too thick and the contact holes are too small - so that 1) the plastic wrap around the battery hits the plastic and pushes the battery away from the metal contact. On several types of battery the plastic wrap is doubled over and provides more interference -- I scratch this material away - but it's not perfect. The tip is trying to extend to the contact, while the nonconducting plastic sheild is trying to provide lateral support for the front end of the battery. This is a big problem if something interferes mechanically.

2) Worse because many batteries have short tips with sloping sides, they have to be perfectly in the center of the hole to make contact. The sides of ➕ tips are sloped and they hit the side of the contact holes in the plastic sheilds (which are too small) - causing the battery to push away from contact when the battery is deflected sideways -- as in a jarring incident (where you hit the mouse on the table).

I put shim paper under the door to push the batteries to the center but the door bent, and the shims were not totally effective. In addition every time I changed the batteries I had to do it again -- the door should not be providing mechanical support for a component needing critical alignment (the battery).

Different batteries have different tip lengths, meaning that some are more prone to interference than others. I've tried several (Kirkland, Duracell, Eveready) but can't remember which were best. Note that Kirkland AAA batteries have a much longer tip than their AA batteries - so the battery manufacturers have slop in their standards as well.

The ➕ contacts in the mouse are also difficult to clean, since they are recessed.

If the ➕ contacts were metal cups instead of plastic sheild, then the tips would never be bumped out of the cup, and would not loose contact. My recommendation is that Apple create metal cups at the ➕ tip end to 'hold' the top of the batteries more securely, and maybe drop the plastic sheild or at least enlarge the hole or just put a contact bump/dimple facing each tip. Also, as an electrical engineer, I recommend whopping big capacitors to ride out voltage dropouts - or at least a safe low voltage halt state that would recover.

Still, it's my favorite mouse by a long shot.

While your angle might be the case with your Magic Mouse, I can tell you that it does not appear to be that type of problem with my mouse. I am using Rayovac Alkaline batteries and they are very uniform and well made. The positive contacts are long enough to contact the mouse where it should and does not touch the plastic that you describe. with the cover off, there is clearly space between the battery case and the plastic so I am getting full contact between battery and mouse.

Since I am having the same issue with two different Macs in two different locations using three different Apple Magic Mouse, I can't imagine this problem could be anything other than software related. At work, I don't normally have my iPhone or iPad near my computer, so I am having a hard time imagining that this is a Bluetooth interferance issue. At my home, where the iPad and iPhone are plugged in and charging near my iMac, I suppose it could be causing a problem. Since I am getting the same behavior in both locations, I am leaning to some type of software issue that has occured since upgrading to 10.7.2.

Thanks for your suggestion. but I am still looking.

My background is as an electrical engineer designing digital hardware. The behavior -- erratic operation and even a flickering power light -- is indicative of an intermittent electrical connection. The fact that putting in shims to trap the battery in place, and in my case removing the interfering packaging, lends credence to that theory. The test would be to put an oscilliscope probe on the internal power rails and to shake the mouse around. I suspect you would see tremendous voltage drops.

In addition, if they put in insufficient capacitors on the main power rail, then the internal components would not be able to store sufficient energy to absorb short duration disconnects -- imagine the battery tip bouncing sideways upon impact with the desktop -- or longer term disconnection when my postulated mechanical interference separates the ➕ tip for a longer period of time. Even worse would be some sort of split power rail -- drawing power from one battery in a two battery series (sometimes used for some sort of analog reference voltages) which would totally upset some active device in the mouse circuitry if the reference or the power rail fluctuated. Further, I found that the erratic operation seemed worse as the battery voltage dipped, evidence that the lower internal stored energy, at the lower voltages, made the circuitry even more upset to shorter voltage supply drops, again suggesting a too small power capacitor.

Also, there's almost no software here. I would imagine the mouse sends a packet of data on the BlueTooth channel with a device identifier (I am a mouse), and some sort of motion information, and some sort of touch message. At the computer end, it would just monitor and dissassemble the packets. Not a lot to go wrong. Originally I too thought it looked like software and was banging my mouse on the table to get it to register. But stuffing in a shim and cleaning the plastic away eliminated most of that.

Nick

I have an easier solution. I have replaced both my magic mouse with Logitech's bluetooth mouse and it is flawless. Not more connectivity issues and frustrations.

Apple's product quality is getting from bad to worse. I've been an Apple fan for the longest time but I find myself switching to other products more frequently than before. Pretty soon, there will be nothing left to lock me down on Apple products.

I cannot follow you away from the touch surface of the Magic Mouse. Three button rollerwheel mice give me the shivers. Brrrrr.....

I have found that if i inadvertantly touch my apple keyboard with the mouse it will disconnect. I suppose this jolts it slightly which is waht you guys are saying if you tap it vertically.

Since I realised what was causing the disconnects and I am a little more carefull, it hardly ever happens.

-Paul-