How pair wireless keyboard, mouse from iMac with my MacBook Pro?

I'm not quite sure of the process but my guess is that you can't have them paired simultaneously with bluetooth switched on for both machines.

The solution I think is to turn bluetooth off on the iMac. This will then leave the keyboard & mouse free to be paired with the MBP.

This will mean that you will need to turn bluetooth off on the MBP to use them again with the iMac.

There might be some software created which will allow you to use a software 'switch' but I'm not familiar with any.

Neville

rcook349 wrote:
Thanks. When I click to turn bluetooth off on the iMac, it warns me that I won't be able to access it again to turn it back on because my devices will be unusable. Doh! So can't do that. Any other ideas?

Thanks.

Yes, Bluetooth can only pair with one device so you can't use your wireless keyboard and mouse with multiple computers without re-pairing.

If you're willing to give up wireless, devices do exist to switch keyboard, mouse and monitor between multiple computers. (a.k.a. KVM, which means keyboard, video, mouse.) KVMs mostly get used in server rooms where there are several computers, but low cost "2 port KVMs" exist, often used for similar situations as yours, a desktop and laptop on the same desk. But AFAIK, all KVMs use wired keyboards & mice. _+In theory+_, you might be able to pair your wireless keyboard & mouse to a USB Bluetooth dongle and the USB dongle plugged into the KVM. But I don't know of anyone doing that and I suspect that when you switch between the computers, the USB dongle will have issues and lose connection, depending on how the KVM deals with the dongle.

If you don't want to have to re-pair to the iMac there is another possibility if you don't want to use the keyboard away from the iMac when working on laptop files. Network the 2 computers so that you can access the files & applications on the laptop from the iMac.

In this configuration you can open any laptop app or file and work on it through the iMac saving the work back onto the laptop. The only thing you probably can't do is download emails to or send from the laptop using the iMac keyboard.

You could also start the laptop in target mode (holding the T key at startup until the target screen appears.) Then connect the 2 with firewire. The laptop acts as an external disk to the iMac.

Neville

I wrote some code to act as an AutoKVM for my iMac and MacBook Pro. It disables bluetooth when a monitor is removed and enables it when a monitor is added. If a BT keyboard and mouse is paired to both an iMac and laptop this will automatically switch the BT keyboard and mouse between the iMac and laptop when the laptop is plugged into the iMac to use it as a secondary display. The logic is overly simplistic and probably won't address every use case (but it does what I need).

C source is below. Maybe someone can port this to applescript. I might tidy it up for distribution if I have time and there's interest...

Tom

#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>

/* Defined function prototypes here since they are defined in Objective-C */
/* requires AppKit.framework */
boolean_t NSApplicationLoad(void);
/* requires IOBluetooth.framework */
int IOBluetoothPreferenceGetControllerPowerState(void);
void IOBluetoothPreferenceSetControllerPowerState(int);

void DisplayReconfigurationCallBack (CGDirectDisplayID display,
CGDisplayChangeSummaryFlags flags,
void *userInfo) {
if (flags & kCGDisplayAddFlag) {
IOBluetoothPreferenceSetControllerPowerState(1);
} else if (flags & kCGDisplayRemoveFlag) {
IOBluetoothPreferenceSetControllerPowerState(0);
}
}

int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
NSApplicationLoad();
CGDisplayRegisterReconfigurationCallback(&DisplayReconfigurationCallBack, NULL);
CFRunLoopRun();
return 0;
}