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Bluetooth keyboard switching delay on Mac (piefed.social)

submitted 5 months ago by Quicky@piefed.social to c/techsupport@lemmy.world

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I have a Logitech K860 keyboard that I use with a work Windows laptop and a personal M4 MacBook Air, both via bluetooth. I'm constantly switching between the two devices during the day, and the bluetooth switching buttons are great for that. Switching to the Windows machine is instant, but when switching to the MacBook there's always a 2 or 3 second delay before it connects. Is there anything I can do to improve the device switching speed to the Mac?

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I don't know about the Mac Bluetooth stack, but if these machines are both network-connected and active simultaneously, there's software that will let one proxy to another over the network. In that scenario, you have the associated software installed on both machines, your keyboard/mouse/whatever connected to one machine, and then hit a key combination or similar to switch, which should be effectively instantaneous.

searches

It sounds like it's called a "software KVM" or a "virtual KVM". I won't try to recommend one, as I haven't used any, but it might be a way to avoid the delay that would work for you. One example, though:

https://symless.com/synergy

[–] Quicky@piefed.social 1 points 5 months ago

Cheers yeah, I actually tried a bunch of those software KVMs with my previous keyboard. I’m limited to portable ones as I don’t have admin access to the work machine, and for whatever reason both the keyboard and mouse were laggy as hell when moving to the Mac with each one, although I think all the ones I tried were all actually forks of Synergy.

That was what prompted the change to a Bluetooth multi-device ergo keyboard. The K860 is superb, but I would like to eliminate the Mac connection delay if possible.

Much of the research I’ve done seems to suggest “that’s just the way it is on Mac”, but there were suggestions regarding switching off Handoff so I’ll give that a go in the morning and see if it makes any difference.