Learn what to do if your Apple’s Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse fails to connect and work with your Mac. Note that the solutions are for fixing the wireless connection between your Mac and Magic accessories. You can always connect your Magic Keyboard or Trackpad via a cable to your Mac, and it should work, provided there are no hardware problems.
Make sure you have the following:
Lightning cable: You will need it to establish a wired connection between your Mac and the Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse. You will also need a USB hub if the Lightning cable has a USB-A port on one end and your Mac only has USB-C ports.
Wired keyboard or mouse: Since your wireless Magic accessories are not working, you will need to directly plug in a wired keyboard or mouse to navigate around your Mac. Of course, you don’t need these if you are troubleshooting the connection issue on your MacBook.
Fix Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse not working when you power on your Mac.
After you switch on your MacBook, its built-in trackpad and keyboard are ready to use the moment you see the Lock Screen. However, when you boot up your desktop Mac, it takes a moment for the wireless Magic Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse to become available for use. When you enter the password and go to the Desktop, you will again have a brief moment of downtime until the accessories starts working.
Both these short connection wait times are a normal occurrence. However, if your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse are not connecting automatically to your desktop Mac and you have waited for a while, just connect them with a Lightning cable, and it should become available for use. Leave your Magic accessory connected to your Mac via a cable for a minute or two. After that, you can disconnect the cable, and the accessory will continue to work wirelessly. You can also force your Mac to shut down using its power button, wait for a while, and then power it back on. It should auto-connect to your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse.
What to do if your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse has suddenly stopped working?
In rare cases, your keyboard, trackpad, or mouse may stop working midway after losing connection or going out of battery. Here are all the effective tips to fix it.
Plug the accessories. If you get an alert when your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse battery gets critically low, simply connect it to your Mac with a cable, and you can start using it. You can check the battery percentage of it by going to the Bluetooth section in macOS Control Center or using the Batteries widget.
Restart your Magic accessory. Turn off your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse using the small power button and wait for at least 30 seconds. After that, flip the switch back on and wait once again for it to connect automatically to your Mac. Of course, make sure your Mac’s Bluetooth is enabled in Apple menu > System Settings... In case auto-connect doesn’t work, connect it manually from Apple menu > System Settings... > Bluetooth.
Restart your Mac. Random glitches in macOS can cause all sorts of trouble, including issues between your Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, and Mouse. So, simply restart your Mac using the wired mouse, and hopefully, the problem will go away. You can also force your Mac to turn off by holding the power button for a few seconds until the screen goes black. After that, wait for about a minute, and then press the power button once to turn it back on.
Toggle Bluetooth off and on. You cannot turn off Bluetooth on your desktop Mac if the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad/Mouse are connected to it. So, connect a wired keyboard and mouse to your Mac and then go to System Settings to turn Bluetooth off and back on.
Forget the accessory and connect again. If the problem continues, you should forget the Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse from Mac’s Bluetooth settings and then reconnect it. Grab your Lightning cable and follow these detailed steps on your Mac with a wired keyboard and mouse connected to it:
• Open Apple menu > System Settings... and select Bluetooth
• Click the info button (i) next to your Magic Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse and hit Forget This Device > Forget Device
• Turn off your Magic Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse using its power switch, and then restart your Mac
• Lastly, turn on your Magic Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse and go to Apple menu > System Settings... > Bluetooth to connect it to your Mac
This step should address connection issues, and now your Magic accessory will work as intended.
Also, don't forget to update your Mac. If your Mac is not running the latest version of macOS, go to Apple menu> System Settings... > General > Software Update to download and install the newest version of the operating system.
Some Mac users have content blockers installed into Safari, which are designed to prevent a part of a webpage from loading, things like preventing a remote javascript that tracks cookies or loads ads, or something that places a cookie into your browser, etc. However, content blockers can cause interference with certain webpages, and it’s not unusual for content blockers to completely break a website or webpage from functioning.
Problems with content blockers are particularly common with finance and banking sites, wi-fi captive portals, and video sharing sites, so you may find yourself wanting to disable content blockers for a specific site as you browse the web in Safari on your Mac.
It’s not unusual to need to disable content blockers for certain websites to work properly, so here’s how to do that:
• Navigate to the site you want to disable content blockers for in Safari on the Mac
• After the webpage has loaded, right-click on the website URL in the address bar, and choose “Settings for DomainName.com”
• Uncheck the box next to “Enable content blockers” to disable content blockers for this particular domain
• Refresh the webpage, and content blockers will now be disabled
Notice that you can even change other settings for a specific website in the same popup window.
With the content blockers disabled, the website should now load and function as intended. There are also sites that you choose to not run content blockers on for other reasons, maybe so they function properly, maybe to support them, or maybe to even load them at all, since there are some examples where content blockers prevent a site from accessible at all.
Learn how to efficiently manipulate text on your Mac using Find and Replace, simplifying tasks and boosting productivity in popular apps like Notes, Pages, Numbers, TextEdit, etc.
In addition to words, you can also find and replace spaces, numbers, and special characters from your document. You can use it to substitute a word or make corrections in a lengthy document. Other times, it can be handy if you want to delete specific words, symbols, or phrases from your writing.
• Open Notes, Pages, or Numbers and go inside the relevant note or document
• Click Edit from the top menu bar and select Find > Find or Find and Replace (in apps like Pages and Numbers, you can also click the View button from the top left of the app window and choose Show Find & Replace
• Enter the term you want to look for (click the tiny arrow next to the search glass icon for more options, for instance, you can uncheck Ignore Case to find the words that exactly match the capitalization style you specify
• In the second box, enter what you want to replace the found term with
If you type nothing in the Replace box and go ahead with the next steps, it will delete the found words from the document. In other words, you will be replacing found words with nothing, which obviously equates to deleting the searched-for word. You can also choose to replace the found words with just a space (press the Space Bar once) or the desired symbol.
• Click All, and it will replace the found word with the replacement at every instance, or, click Replace, and it will replace only at the selected position (you can also use the arrow icons or press the return key to cycle through the found instances of the word without actually replacing them with the said term)
If you’re using Pages or Numbers, you will see three buttons: Replace All, Replace & Find, or Replace buttons. Replace & Find will replace the selected match with the replacement text and then automatically move to the next match. The Replace button replaces the selected match but does not auto-move to the next one.
If you’re shopping for a loan, you’ll undoubtedly have a few loan options. Comparing loans can be intimidating and daunting, and it’s hard to know which option is right for you, or which loan may make the most sense for your particular situation. But thanks to the Numbers app, you can easily compare loans.
All you have to do is input some data into a free Numbers spreadsheet, and you’ll be able to do a quick loan comparison. To get started, make sure you have the Numbers app installed on your device, and have some general information about the loan options, things like the loan amount, the interest rate, and the loan length:
• Get the Numbers app if you have not done so already (free on the App Store)
• Open the Numbers app and choose to create a new Numbers document
• Look under the “Personal Finance” section for “Loan Comparison” and select to create that
• Near the bottom of the spreadsheet, input your loans and loan data to compare
The Loan Comparison spreadsheet will instantly calculate your loan options and provide you with valuable information, including your monthly payment, total interest paid, and the total amount paid, as well as offer you a bar graph to visualize the loan amounts.
Want to find a solution to back up multiple Macs in your home or office without buying dedicated hardware like network-attached storage, paying for a backup service, or needing multiple external drives? You can set up a shared network folder on Mac to allow other machines to save their Time Machine backups.
The handy feature to set up a shared network folder for backups with macOS is like a built-in virtual NAS. Keep in mind, you’ll want to make sure the Mac you’re setting up the shared folder on has enough storage to handle backups from Macs you’ll be using it with. You can also limit backups to a specific size. And don’t forget to regularly back up the Mac you’re using as the shared folder host with an external drive or other option.
Set up a shared Time Machine backup folder on Mac
• Choose Apple menu > System Settings... > General
• Choose Sharing and turn on File Sharing
• Click the (i) information button
• Now click the "Options..." Button and make sure “Share files and folders using SMB” is checked
• Click Done
• Click the + button at the bottom of the Shared Folders list
• Select the folder you want to use (or create a new one) for sharing, then click Open
• Control-click the folder name, then choose "Advanced Options..."
• Turn on "Share as a Time Machine backup destination" (you can also limit backups to a certain GB threshold)
• When done, click "OK"
Back up a Mac to a shared network folder
• Choose Apple menu > System Settings... > General > Time Machine
• Click the "Add Backup Disk..." button
• Choose the shared folder and click the "Set Up Disk..." button
