Do you have Bluetooth devices and an older Mac with USB but without Bluetooth support? Want to add Bluetooth support for a song?
USB Bluetooth dongles are cheap nowadays, but the vast majority only mention support for the usual flavors of Windows – Windows 98 and later, the versions of Windows that support USB. Short of taking a chance and spending your money, how can you know if it will work with your Mac?
Avantree DG40S USB Bluetooth 4.0 Adapter Dongle for PC Laptop. Range USB Bluetooth Audio Transmitter Adapter for PC Laptop Mac PS4 Nintendo Switch. Jul 11, 2009 - Do you have Bluetooth devices and an older Mac with USB but without Bluetooth support? Want to add Bluetooth support for a song?
That’s where Low End Mac is stepping up to the plate. We’re going to acquire USB Bluetooth dongles one at a time, test them on our G4 Power Macs running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard (and earlier versions), and report back to you on this page.
Unbranded USB Bluetooth 2.0 Dongle
I suspect we’re going to run into this a lot – unbranded dongles. This one supports Bluetooth 2.0 and is made in China. It’s identified as Tiny USB 2.0 Bluetooth Dongle Adapter for PC Laptop (ID=4911) on my receipt from BudgetGadgets.com (no longer online) in Hong Kong, where it sells for $5.07 – and quantity discounts are available.
I ordered this on October 22 and received it on November 9 via airmail, not an uncommon turnaround time from the Orient. It was packed with a USB keyboard that we plan to review in a few days, and the whole package was well wrapped.
I don’t have a lot of Bluetooth hardware to test at present: my LG phone, my old Motorola phone, and a Plantronics Voyager 510 headset. I was able to pair each of these on my OS X 10.5 Mac, and the LG phone, the only device I tried with it, on my OS X 10.4 machine. I did not try using the phones as a data connection to the Internet, since I don’t want to pay Alltel Verizon for data service.
Since first posting this article, I have also used the dongle with my Blue & White G3 running Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, and it works with my phones. However, the Bluetooth drivers for 10.3 do not support headsets.
I’ll be look into picking up some other Bluetooth gadgets for testing purposes and update this articles as I test them. I’m still planning to test it with OS X 10.2 Jaguar on my Blue & White G3.
BudgetGadgets.com has a host of low cost computer and electronic gadgets available, including several other Bluetooth dongles, mice, keyboards, USB flash drives, hard drive enclosures, USB hubs, memory cards, speakers, and even some netbooks. BudgetGadgets.com is offering Low End Mac readers a 5% discount using the coupon code DM5OFF23.
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Background:
After much searching and digging through outdated forums and support threads (usually peppered with snide, and unhelpful commentary), I managed to successfully set-up a Bluetooth dongle on my Macbook. There seems to be a lot of people trying to figure out how to accomplish this seemingly simple task, but not that many offering working solutions, so I decided to add to the cause.
After much searching and digging through outdated forums and support threads (usually peppered with snide, and unhelpful commentary), I managed to successfully set-up a Bluetooth dongle on my Macbook. There seems to be a lot of people trying to figure out how to accomplish this seemingly simple task, but not that many offering working solutions, so I decided to add to the cause.
I was getting absolutely horrendous range (< 3 feet) on ALL of my devices but only when they were paired to my Mac. Web searches almost exclusively turned up almost guides for Mac Pro (the desktops) or some long-winded crap about how to minimize RF interference. Desktop advice is approximately useless to us laptop owners, and several attempts at reducing interference produced minimal results. At best, such efforts *might* have helped with unstable hot-spots or fluctuating connection strength — in theory, they may have even added a couple feet to the coverage radius — but it was hard to tell if that was just anamolous good luck or a result of my efforts. It definitely was not going to bring about the 10-20x increase I needed just to get into the ballpark of what I would consider acceptable.
In the age of wireless routers, multi-device users, and smart homes flaunting myriad other electronics, many of the suggestions I found were wildly impractical or simply unrealistic. What is the use of wireless devices if one must shut them off, restrict said features, or move them away from the location that they’re needed?
As an aside, I have no idea why Apple decided to put their Bluetooth card, Wifi card, and USB 3.0 ports within the same couple-square-inches of one another, but I felt like if any interference was to blame for the abysmal range of my peripherals, it was likely on the inside of the Macbook itself - not much I could do about that.
...deep breath... [/rant]
I'm now able to use my mouse without having to place it on the wrong side of my desk in order for it to be close enough to my PC and can even comfortably connect my bluetooth headphones (something I'd given up entirely), and wear them out of the room.
Hopefully this saves someone from the headaches I experienced. Cheers.
DISCLAIMER: I am neither a technician nor customer support specialist; I’m just an end-user sharing my personal experience. I recognize this tutorial is rather long-winded, but the vast majority of it is just explanations, observations, and suggestions. The actual process takes less than a minute once the software is downloaded, but I'm a firm believer in the idea that the more you understand what you're doing, the less likely you are to run into problems or need additional assistance. I’m rather busy, so please understand if I don’t respond very quickly to questions/comments. I've tried to be as thorough as possible and have included essentially everything I know about the subject. I have no idea if [insert random device] is compatible with [insert random computer], and I obviously take no responsibility for your actions, should you go about breaking things (though that seems extremely unlikely; this isn't exactly neurosurgery). The following steps detail the exact steps I took, and they worked just fine for me. Your mileage may vary.
My Hardware:
- Dongle: Kinivo BTD-300 (~11 USD on Amazon)
- There are others out there, but I can't speak to their compatibility with Apple products. A surprisingly low percentage of those offered on Amazon even attempt to claim that they work with Mac.
- Computer: Macbook Pro (Mid-2012; non-Retina; 13-inch)
- Operating System: macOS Sierra (v10.12.5)
![Usb bluetooth adapter for macbook Usb bluetooth adapter for macbook](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125288984/613534911.jpg)
ADDENDUM, Important if you rely on Bluetooth keyboards and/or mouses:
I should mention two important details here:
- YOU WILL LOSE BT CONNECTIVITY IN THE INITIAL SETUP PROCESS AND ALL DEVICES WILL NEED TO BE RE-PAIRED (paired again, that is). The re-pairing process only needs to be done once, and they will be remembered.
- macOS WILL NOT DEFAULT TO THE EXTERNAL DONGLE AFTER RESTARTING YOUR COMPUTER. Thus, you must run BTE and repeat the steps outlined here (except downloading and installing, obviously) in order to re-activate your dongle after every reboot.
Neither of these is not a problem ifyou can easily use the built in keyboard and mouse on your laptop. However, I use my laptop more like a desktop when I'm at home. That is, I keep it closed and tucked away on a shelf beside my desk and use external monitors with BT peripherals. The shelf is such that I can't open my laptop without removing it, which is a significant nuisance requiring me to unplug everything, log in, and plug everything back in. If you're in a similar situation, you'll want to have a USB keyboard and/or mouse handy.
- My personal work-around and suggestion: In keeping with the 'no-cables-allowed' theme (I almost certainly suffer from some degree of undiagnosed OCD), a little 2.4 GHz RF-wireless keyboard/mouse combo is a great solution. They cost about 15 bucks and fit nicely in a drawer until needed.
- Side-note/FYI: If considering this option, keep in mind that Bluetooth wireless is NOT the same as RF (radio-frequency) wireless. BT must be paired to host devices, whereas RF peripherals establish connections independently from said devices. RF peripherals (almost) always come with a USB receiver (often pre-configured) which is required for use. Effectively, they just replace a physical, wired connection with a radio signal while maintaining the (unrivaled) plug-n-play compabitibility of USB. 'Then why use BT at all,' you ask? The trade off is obviously that BT works with many devices lacking in USB ports (e.g. phones, tablets, some PCs) and often adds the ability be paired with more than one device simultaneously.
I restart infrequently so this is, at worst, a mild inconvenience to me - one which I have neither the time nor desire to research/devise a solution. If a solution is possible, it would likely involve Automator, startup scripts, Terminal, and/or modifications to configuration files which could impact system stability (which is why Apple essentially made them off-limits when they introduced System Integrity Protection in macOS Sierra). Furthermore, I'm all-too-familiar with the sparsity of resources on this topic, and it's just not worth it for me. If someone knows or finds a way to address this issue, by all means, share in the comments section I'll link to it at the appropriate spot in the tutorial (with appropriate citation, of course).