Is using the Magic Mouse 2 & original Magic Mouse on the same Mac unsupported in High Sierra

bluetoothhigh sierramouse

I recently upgraded my mid 2011 Mac mini to macOS High Sierra. I purchased the Magic Mouse 2 about a year ago, but really loathe the charging port on the bottom (unbelievably stupid design, but I digress). As such, I kept my old (original) Magic Mouse handy for when I needed to charge the Magic Mouse 2. I never had problems with this use case in OS X El Capitan.

However, today when I tried to use the old Magic Mouse, macOS absolutely freaked out and neither of the Bluetooth mice could connect. I had to use a generic Logitech USB mouse to "forget" both of them (old and new), then I could reconnect the Magic Mouse 2 after it charged.

So my question: is the original Magic Mouse unsupported in macOS High Sierra? (edit: it definitely is supported, not the issue). Or perhaps I simply can no longer use the Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2 interchangeably?

Update 1: Forgetting and re-pairing both of the the mice was a temporary fix. Nothing else worked, including rebooting.

Update 2: Issue has returned. I again had to fight macOS tooth-and-nail to get the Magic Mouse 2 paired after using the Magic Mouse!

Update 3: One thing I forgot to mention: when the Magic Mouse 2 has lost pairing (after using the Magic Mouse) and I plug it in and switch it on, the "Mouse" section of System Preferences goes absolutely berserk, rapidly alternating between the normal screen and the "looking for bluetooth mouse" screen.

Best Answer

1st Answer Alt. Using The Interface Answer (Credit user3439894)

(Short Way)

Does the command line version from my understanding.

  • Open System preferences
  • Open Bluetooth Settings
  • Click on Advanced
  • Uncheck the 2nd Box "Open Bluetooth Setup Assistant at startup if no mouse or trackpad is detected" Advanced Bluetooth Settings

Note: this may look different on your Mac as I am running on MBP macOS 10.14.5 Mojave

 

Fun Note: To open Bluetooth Preferences directly from Terminal run: open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Bluetooth.prefPane

1st Answer Using Terminal/Commandline

My hypothesis, is I believe the bluetooth devices may be fighting.

If you don't mind a little terminal action, then, lets try turning off the Automatic Search for bluetooth.

Open Terminal and run: Update 2:This is not a mandatory step this will show up if you run After the write steps.

defaults find 'AutoSeek'

This for me just returned:

Found 1 keys in domain 'com.apple.systempreferences': {
    BluetoothAutoSeekPointingDevice = 1;
}

So, I ran:

defaults read com.apple.systempreferences BluetoothAutoSeekPointingDevice

This should return 1, as it does on my machine. So, let's turn this off.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences BluetoothAutoSeekPointingDevice -bool false

Doing some more research, I also found something similar, in other plist files.

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth BluetoothAutoSeekPointingDevice

But to change this is requires your admin password as it is part of the SIP protection.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth BluetoothAutoSeekPointingDevice -bool false

Then, to make the changes take effect: (Thanks to user3439894 for the update from the comments.)

killall cfprefsd

Note: You may not have com.apple.systempreferences the alternative is com.apple.systempref.plist So if you run the defaults read and get an error please try the substitute.

3rd Answer

Try using blueutil and let me know.

4th Answer

Try "Reseting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac."

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