Bluetooth keyboard not found after 10.13.3 update

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Bluetooth keyboard not found after 10.13.3 update

This evening I upgraded a MacBook, MacBookPro and iMac to High Sierra 10.13.3. All went well for the MacBook and MBP.

However, the iMac can no longer find its bluetooth keyboard.

And since it cannot find the keyboard, I cannot log into it... So not much I can do in the way of troubleshooting. I have, of course, power cycled it. But I cannot "boot into safe mode" as that requires holding down a key, etc.

The bluetooth mouse is working just fine on the same machine.

The bluetooth keyboard has power, and has its green light blinking, so it is ready to pair.

These all worked fine before the update.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

iMac (17-inch Late 2006), macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Jan 27, 2018 9:04 PM

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Answer 1

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AtrynWestlake Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 27, 2018 9:45 PM in response to AtrynWestlake

Resolved, for now.

tldr; Appears to have been an issue with the batteries in the keyboard.

More detail:

Whether a timing coincidence or and issue with how 10.13.3 handles low battery on the keyboard, I don't know. The keyboard was powering on and the green light was flashing. However, after further research, multiple sites said the flashing pattern for "discoverable" should be blink-blink-pause-blink-blink-pause, etc. Also, several sites said that after doing this for some # of minutes, it should power back down to save power and stop.

My keyboard was doing a steady slow blinking, with no pauses. Perhaps this is a low-battery pattern? It also never stopped. I had removed and reinserted the batteries several times and it always powered back up into that same state.

Finally, I just decided to replace the batteries with fresh from the plastic ones. Sure enough, the keyboard started up with the faster blink-blink-pause pattern for discovery. I booted up the iMac and it paired fine.

Also, another correction - I selected the wrong model iMac from my profile in the original post. This was with a late 2013 21.5" iMac. The older one wouldn't run High Sierra. 🙂

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Bluetooth keyboard not found after 10.13.3 update

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