Apple wireless keyboard and mouse/trackpad problems
How to solve Bluetooth connectivity issues
If you are working from home lately because of the pandemic and turning to your old hardware at home to make them useful for your makeshift home office setup, you might be hitting the same issue that I was.
My old Apple Keyboard/Trackpad setup is intermittently working. It is connecting to Bluetooth, but after a reboot, it never connects back for example. (Or turning Bluetooth on/off, or after replacing batteries). I think I now have a final solution for this.
I believe the main reason for this, is that they were paired with old hardware before. Since they were in a drawer for a really long time, I have no idea which hardware and when! Here is how to make these work with no problem. (This will wipe the previous pairings and will pair them to your current setup!)
Temporary pairing
Open Bluetooth Preferences by going to your Bluetooth settings.
Press and hold the power button of your device that you want to pair. This will turn off the device. Easy way to test if your power is on/off is to press the power once and let it go if the green light turns on, it means your device is on. We want it to be OFF!
Once the device is off, press and hold the power button until you see that it’s blinking.
Then go to Bluetooth Preferences panel. and you should see your device in there. Click Connect.
Do this for all your devices that are causing problems (For me it was Keyboard and Trackpad)
Factory Reset
Once you have them paired, we will put them in their factory mode.
Hold Shift + Option on your keyboard then click your Bluetooth menu again, choose Debug and choose “Factory reset all connected Apple devices”. REMEMBER THAT YOU WILL LOSE YOUR PREVIOUS PAIRINGS WITH THOSE DEVICES! You will also lose your current pairing too.
Final Pairing
Now you’re ready for the final pairing. Do the steps in Temporary Pairing above. (If you did it correctly, you don’t even need to hold the power button since it’ll be in factory mode and will be ready for pairing!)
Now that this computer is the only pairing your devices will have in their memory, they will connect/reconnect much more smoothly.
I hope this helped someone! :)
