bluetooth
I have some bluetooth headphones which read out the name of the devices it connects to. My corporate MacBook Pro has a specific hostname, so when I connect to the headphones I hear a really long, random alphanumeric string.
If I was able to change the Computer name in the Sharing preferences pane it will rename the Bluetooth name, but is there a way to rename the bluetooth name only, leaving the computer name and network hostname alone?
The best step to isolating your issue would be to collect some data about the bluetooth environment where you are using your mac. Radio waves come and go with other devices, new phones, degrading antennas and changes in bluetooth firmware.
The Bluetooth Explorer is the best tool I have found to troubleshoot bluetooth hardware and data. It's free as part of Xcode from the Mac App Store.
You can debug data issues, see the protocols that connected devices are using, and get to all manner of engineering data relating to bluetooth such as errors, relative signal strength indication (RSSI). It's hard to tell if this will help you, but it lets me know when a microwave or home phone was causing noise issues on several occasions when my hardware was otherwise working properly.
On my iMac(macOS 10.12.6), none of solutions mentioned above works. After reading the man page of ioreg. The solution that works on my computer is:
// the -r option is used to reduce output
// the -l option is used to display properties for all object
// by default some object properties are not shown
// the -c specify device class, the class could be specific or general
ioreg -c AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService -r -l
ioreg -c AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService -r -l | grep -i battery
// instead of using device io class, you could also use a property key to query
// you need to know one of target device's property key(-k), for example it is BatteryPercent for Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
// any device with this property will be listed
ioreg -r -l -k "BatteryPercent"
ioreg -r -l -k "BatteryPercent" | grep -i battery
There are some other device classes to try for the -c argument: AppleHSBluetoothDevice AppleHSBluetoothHIDDriver AppleMultitouchMouseHIDEventDriver AppleHIDKeyboardEventDriverV2, they give different output.
Best Answer
Had the same problem, this worked for me:
You can rename the LocalHostName separately from the Computer Name, which should give you the desired result, and shouldn't mess with any network settings.
Under System Preferences -> Sharing, click the Edit button to the lower right of the Computer Name field. Here you can enter a different local hostname, and leave the computer name set to whatever you want the Bluetooth name to be.
If you explicitly need to set a hostname, you can also do that from Terminal, by entering:
Before you do that though, you might want to check the current values. You can use these commands for hostname, local hostname, and computer name respectively:
An explanation of each of the properties can be found here:
ComputerName is the so-called “user-friendly” computer name for a Mac, it’s what will show up on the Mac itself and what will be visible to others when connecting to it over a local network. This is also what’s visible under the Sharing preference panel.
HostName is the name assigned to the computer as visible from the command line, and it’s also used by local and remote networks when connecting through SSH and Remote Login.
LocalHostName is the name identifier used by Bonjour and visible through file sharing services like AirDrop