Thursday 9 April 2015

Connecting to an AWOL bluetooth mouse on Mac OSX

If you are like me, you sometimes turn your Apple Magic Mouse off when leaving your computer unattended for a while. The problem is that sometimes it does not seem to want to connect again when you turn it back on. What to do? Without a mouse, how do you open the mouse preferences to reconnect?

One option is obviously to attach some other kind of pointer - a trackpad or USB mouse - and use this. But (a) you might not have one to hand, and (b) that’s rather labour intensive. So, instead, use the keyboard shortcuts:

1. In Finder (use cmd+tab to cycle through to Finder if other applications are open), use shift+cmd+a to open the Applications folder.

2. Select System Preferences using the arrow keys. You might need to tab into the window first. Hitting t will jump you to the first T… application, then just use the up arrow.

3. Open System Preferences with cmd+o.

4. Hit tab to enter the Search box and start typing mouse. The Mouse icon will get highlighted. Hit enter to open.

5. After a few seconds of looking, your bluetooth mouse should be found. Hit enter to connect. Job done!

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