Troubleshooting Bluetooth Connections

In this video, I will show you how you can troubleshoot Bluetooth connections on your Mac. Let’s say you have a Bluetooth keyboard or a trackpad, and you’re having problems with it. What are the different options you have to troubleshoot it? Well, let’s find out. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now I have a Bluetooth keyboard, an Apple keyboard, and a Bluetooth trackpad, an Apple trackpad. If I was having a problem with any of those devices, the first thing that I recommend doing is turning the power off on that actual device. So let’s say I was having a problem with my keyboard. I turn off the power on the keyboard, and then I would turn it back on and see if that fixes the problem. In most cases, that’ll fix the problem, but let’s say it didn’t fix the problem, or maybe what the problem is you’re having issues with more than one device.

Well, then what you want to do is turn Bluetooth on and off on your Mac. To do that, you go up to your menu bar, and then you go to the Bluetooth icon. You click on it, and then you’re able to turn it on and off just by clicking on the slider here. Now I’m using macOS Big Sur. So I also have access to this through the control panel. I click on the control panel, and we have Bluetooth, and we can see that it is on; I click on this, and from here, I’m able to turn it on and off. I can also see what devices are connected. So the first thing is to turn off the actual device and then turn it back on and then turn off Bluetooth on the Mac and then turn that back on.

If that doesn’t fix the problem, what you may want to do is re-pair it disconnect the device from your Mac, and then re-pair it. You have to reset it. So how do we do that? Well, if it’s just one device, let’s say it was just with my keyboard; my trackpad is working fine. Well, then what I do is I go down to Bluetooth preferences here, and I go over to my keyboard, and then all I need to do is click on the X. It’ll disconnect it from my Mac. And then what I’ll have to do is I’ll have to re-pair.

To pair it, you push the button for a few seconds. You might have to look up the instructions depending on the device you have, but basically put it into pairing mode, and then you’re going to see Connect. Click on connect, and it’ll connect that device back up, and hopefully, that’ll fix the problem. So you disconnect it and then establishing a new connection.

Now, if you have problems with multiple devices, well, you’ll have to do this individually for each one. Well, if they’re Apple devices, there is a shortcut to reset all of your Apple devices. What we need to do is go back up to our menu bar. We go to our Bluetooth, and then instead of just clicking on it, remember when I click on it, I get my different devices here. Some people may know that I do have different options when I hold down the command key, but there’s another option. If I hold down the option and shift key simultaneously, I have the option and shift key, and when I click, I have a new option. I can factory reset all of my Apple devices. I can also remove all of my devices, and then I have to add them all back in. And then, if I want to reset the whole module, I click on reset the Bluetooth module, and it would reset it. What I’ll have to do is pair up all my devices again.

So those are the different ways that you can troubleshoot Bluetooth on your Mac. The first thing is to turn the power on and off on the individual device. If that doesn’t work, turn Bluetooth on and off on the Mac itself. If that doesn’t work, then disconnect the device and then pair it back up. So basically, you’re resetting it. If you want to reset all of your devices. Go to the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar and hold down the option and shift simultaneously. And from there, you’re going to be able to factory reset all of the Apple devices, as well as reset the Bluetooth module and remove all of the devices. If you remove all the devices, you’ll have to pair them all back up again.

So those are some troubleshooting tips for Bluetooth connections on the Mac.