Magic Mouse Loses Connection

After reading through some of these, and having the same problem - took the battery out and realized there was a lot of crud built up on the black strips on the bottom of the mouse...and some dust inside. Used a windex-dampened paper towel to clean off crud and dust off terminal points, and it works great! Had been cutting out on me every few seconds...now hasn't dropped the connection once.

Great post with lots of solutions for all sorts of mouse issues. I have a late 2009 27 inch iMac that keeps chugging along, but started losing the wireless mouse connection every minute or so. After reading the post I realized I never looked at the most obvious problem - perhaps the terminals have corroded after five years. Looking carefully, sure enough, the two positive terminal recesses looked a little dingy, but they are not so easily accessible, so I just took a clean paper towel, twisted it to form a point, and twirled it around to press against the metal to remove any obvious corrosion. Didn't bother using alcohol or anything. Did this for each side, and also on the bottom spring-loaded connections for good measure. Replaced the batteries and cover and voila, it works fine.

Especially with batteries, it's important to have a solid connection. As a software engineer, I'm often reminded that it will never work right unless the hardware is working right to start with. I have also noticed that the batteries are not as snug as they could be in the battery compartment, but that's always been the case and hasn't been the problem so far. It's still has a look and feel of quality more than any of the other the battery compartments I've seen, which is a pleasant reminder today of the vision of Steve Jobs.

I take it back - the problem has returned. I have tried everything suggested here, and nothing works long term. I just tap the mouse when it goes out, and it instantly reconnects. Apple states firmly it is not a loose connection in the mouse (I have tried 2).

I Have been chasing this one for a year or two. I have tried all of the various "solutions" and have decided it is a design issue with the so-called "Magic Mouse". I think the problem lies in the design of the battery compartment. The power gets cut when the batteries move. This usually happens when the mouse is bumped around and can sometimes be fixed simply by gently tapping the mouse down on the mouse pad. Varies other solutions have been suggested to restrain the batteries but rather work in the long term. The design is unusual in that the batteries are not placed in the mouse "head to tail" as is usual but both plus terminals at the same end. Added to this the terminals are highly polished and may get easily contaminated. I have noticed that the problem is less likely to arise if the batteries are fresh or if the terminals are carefully cleaned.

if it's not any of the above, then the only other explanation is that the Mac loses WiFi momentarily. This does happen with the WiFi connection to printers and may be a common problem with the software or hardware associated with iMacs.

I Personally have given up on this one. It is annoying but life is too short.

THis fault seems to affect all versions of OSX - up to and including Yosemit.

I bought mac book pro with magic mouse about week ago, I realized that there are many user have a same problem of losing connection,

why $69 mouse has more problem than $20 logic tech wireless mouse, hhhmmm. shouldn't apple recall or come up with something reliable mouse for $69..

I'll be darned! Jamming half a business card between the batteries seems to be fixing the problem. Must be the 'made in china' showing through. Yeah you'd think for $70 the build quality would be a little better.

Just remember, this particular thread was started on 1st November 2009 and Apple still haven't fixed it - a mere 5 years and 9 months (approx)! Perhaps they never will...........

The logitec mouse sounds good - is it Apple compatible? I have a Belkin WiFi mouse that I use with an old Windows Laptop (Vista OS!!!) and that works perfectly - no loss of functionality.

I had some success putting a piece of rolled-up paper between the batteries, which seems to hold then in place more tightly. Using non-rechargeables also helped (1.5V vs 1.2V for rechargeable batteries). But rechargeables used to work fine with this mouse when it was new. It all suggested a poor connection, and a close inspection of the recessed positive terminals showed that one was slightly grimy. As Gioros suggests, wiping the terminals clean can help—especially the recessed positive terminals. I just used a piece of tissue held with tweezers to polish the metal. It seems to have fixed the dropout problems and rechargeable batteries now work fine, without the need for anything extra jammed into the battery compartment. I suspect that frequent small dropouts sometimes lead to frequent disconnects. Perhaps that sometimes confuses the computer. I ran into some situations where the mouse wouldn't work at all until I'd deleted and reinstalled the Bluetooth device. But in my case, at least, a marginal battery connection seems to have been the root of the problem.

Hey Guys, I had the same issue and found a solution which may be but one thing for you guys to try... Clean the battery contacts inside the mouse, where the positive tip of the AAs rest. That worked for my situation...

My magic mouse is circa 2013 and it has been disconnecting since I bought it. Hence I never used it, was an extremely expensive paperweight. Reading this thread so I tried 2 things:

1. cleaned the battery contacts, new batteries

2. turned off blue tooth of my iPhone.

Working like a charm now. Has not disconnected on me so far - going on 2 hrs. Before it disconnects every 2 min.

Since I reported this fault (over three years ago) it seems to have largely gone away for me. As I have not really done anything to correct the issue I can only assume that subsequent updates to the OS have resolved a software issue. I did originally try all the various "fixes" suggested on this and other sites and none worked consistently.

I still believe this was a poor piece of design - the contact springs are not strong enough to maintain contact with the batteries, so if there is any vibration they jump and briefly lose contact. Battery life also has an effect on this. Low power levels are more vulnerable and as an aside the power consumption of these mice is huge. A set of batteries last less than a month and the meter never shows more than 70 or 80% charge - even with new batteries straight out of the pack. Neither the keyboard or the touchpad have this issue, so its something in the mouse design/construction.

My profile picture says it all

For reference purposes and FYI that connection issues persist with 10.7 see this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3354192