Bluetooth problem with OSX Yosemite: Magic Mouse and Keyboard

I wonder what Apple will do with all those hundreds of thousand people who has payed for professional support? They must have a solution, don't they?

I changed my mouse pad and the weird lag/issues went away without any hacks or restarts or config changes/resets. Not sure why the mouse pad doesn't work because it works fine with other non apple brand mice.

I can't believe Apple still cannot (or refuse to) address an issue related to a rather old technology: bluetooth.

I didn`t have any issue since beta 10.10.2 2nd release.

It has been 4 days running like my old Mavericks.

7 days running on beta 10.10.2 2nd release and no issue reported.

After nearly one month without problems the issues returned on 10.10.1 😠 Looking forward for the official 10.10.2 release. In the meanwhile I will create ControlPlane (Non Apple tool) profile that switches between "Wifi on/Bluetooth off" and "Wifi off/Bluetooth on" depending on a LAN connection.

I was interested (and dismayed) to find all these posts for a problem that I experienced for the first time today: Magic Mouse getting kicked off bluetooth. I tried the usual first (new batteries, reboot, etc.) but for the past four hours I'm having continuing problems. I finally went to our office's "Basket of Misfit Electronic Devices" and dug out an old mouse with a cord. Is that Apple's way of pushing us forward?

In any case, just to give the details: I don't use WiFi at all on this computer so it's always turned off; I'm on 10.10.1 (to which I upgraded about one week ago, but no problems until today) and it doesn't matter if Safari is in use or not. No problems with the wireless Apple keyboard at all. The mouse stays connected as long as I don't move/use it, but after about 15-120 seconds of use, it disconnects. When it disconnects, the icon disappears from the screen as well.

If I turn bluetooth off and then back on immediately, the keyboard and the mouse both get connected immediately.

Has the track pad had this problem as well?

Welcome to our little support group 😉

Actually you are right - I never encountered this problem at home, where I use the Bluetooth trackpad - only at work with a MagicMouse. The trackpad is max. 10cm away from the MacBook, at work the Mac sits at the left side of my desk while the mouse is on the right side - maybe 70-100cm away from the Mac. But I never had the issue with Mavericks or any other previous OS-X I used since Leopard (like any of the other problems that I see since 10.10) - from my point of view it is still a software issue, not a hardware error.

I'll take my trackpad to work and vice versa - lets see.

Hi Chris

Yes, i get issues with trackpad and wireless keyboard. The keyboard connects & disconnects and if it connects pressing any key results in multiple key entries. It's wacky. If it's not entering multiple letters for each press then It can't keep up with my typing or just cuts out.

As a result i'm unable to log in when my MBP is connected to the Thunderbolt display and I use the bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. I have to open the MBP and use the integrated keyboard. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Let's hope 10.10.2 fixes this nonsense...

Same here with a bluetooth keyboard. I have to lift up the screen before the keyboard starts magically working fine again, after login I can close back the screen and it will continue working normally. 😕

I'm on 10.10.2 beta.

For some time I have had success with the bluetooth magic mouse and keyboard by Macally. For two days now I have had a lost connection message from the mouse. Apple? What are you thinking? If a third party product works and your Apple product does not, I don't understand why. Using 10.1.1.

I must say this is incredibly annoying and disappointing.

I want to pass along a bit of information that might be of use to those having problems with their mice or keyboards, especially where is crops up after some time on an intermittent basis. I began to have this problem and posted a comment. Then I thought about it and decided to try new batteries. That did not help, it may be because they were rechargeable and may not have a high enough voltage. In any event, I decided to try fresh AA non-rechargable batteries and the problem of disconnecting went away. There may be an issue with sufficient voltage from the batteries or some form of intermittency due to voltage drops.

Low battery voltage will cause problems - but that should not be unique to Yosimite - it should show up on all versions. I get about a month's use out of rechargeable batteries in my magic mouse and I never saw the problem on Maverick.

That said since I moved to 10.10.2 beta 2 I have yet to see the problem with my magic mouse - so I am hoping that they have either fixed it or reduced the chances of it happening.

I have found one further source of bluetooth interference that can screw the operation and that is the IR TV remote extender (Marmatek Pyramid) which obviously has a few harmonic issues as it should be transmitting only on the 433MHz band.

cheers

Bob.C

OK, that's by far the most promising (and most stupid) suggestion that I've seen, so I'll jump on that bandwagon. I've tried everything else, am on 10.10.2 since a while, and started having the problems again these days. First with the trackpad, then the keyboard. When everything started, one other thing around the same time I probably started doing was using Duracell NiMH rechargeable batteries. I've looked up the receipt; I've bought them May 10th, 2014. Relatively shortly after, I've bought a USB 3 hub. I noticed some keyboard lag and attributed it to the USB hub, but didn't follow up. This was about end of June. I was on business trips until early September. I experienced the issues massively after that; around the time I had upgraded to Yosemite.

So what also may have happened is that my batteries lasted long enough for not making too much problems, and since then I've those recurring problems. Yes, that would be stupid, but is the best possibility that I've left over for now. What supports that thought is that in the last days, first my trackpad and then my keyboard started their funny behavior again. At the same time, I got a battery warning first for the trackpad and then a couple days later for the keyboard. So I've pulled my Fluke and am going to measure the voltages from now on.

The newly loaded rechargeable batteries, together, bring about 2.743 V.

The fully loaded alkaline batteries I've put into my keyboard show, together, 3.219 V; Apple shows up with 100%.

The mostly fully loaded alkaline batteries I've put into my trackpad show, together, 2.908 V; Apple shows up with 92%.

The rechargeable batteries I took out of the keyboard were at 2.46 V; for the trackpad, 2.475 V.

So I'll track the voltages for a bit and see whether that theory holds. If so, I should get some funny behavior at about 2.5 V.

Thanks for the excellent suggestion!

P.S. As a somewhat related issue, a Bose QC15 headset starts refusing to work (it warns a lot earlier) at 0.94V. The NiMH batteries I use for that charge up to 1.35 V. So you'd have a working band of about 0.4V down from maximum charge. For the trackpad it would be 0.27V, and on the keyboard, it would be around 0.28V - or rather less because both were already behaving funnily for a couple days. In other words, just guesstimating, using those rechargeable batteries - and the NiMH ones are of the more expensive kind - I'd have probably around 0.2V - 0.25V I can consume of the full load until I have problems, while for Alkaline batteries, it would be 0.7V.

Time for a poll... who among us here uses rechargeable batteries?

As I type this my magic mouse status is showing 9% red and has a battery voltage of 2.45V for a pair of Duracell "Rechargeable StayCharged" and I am not seeing any issues....

Just replaced them with a standby set that shows as 77% charge and measures in at 2.70V the pair....

Can't help for the keyboard as I run that USB connected.

cheers

Bob.C