LeCoqRoti
Studios with multiple Macs: moving a mouse between desks
Our studio shares a Magic Trackpad and keyboard between an editing Mac and a machine running Affinity beta builds. AirBuddy’s Magic Handoff moves a peripheral from one Mac to the next with a single click, no Bluetooth menu digging required.
Designers on headphones: seeing which side is fading
When one AirPod dies mid-call, the status window shows exactly which side is draining faster and how the case is holding up. The device groups make sense: iPhone, iPad, and other Macs sit alongside the AirPods in a single quiet panel.
Keeping an eye on batteries without opening System Settings
A menu bar icon—app icon, battery indicator, or nothing at all—shows headset levels at a glance. Usage history for the last twelve or twenty-four hours helps when a Beats pair acts oddly and I want to see if it was charging overnight.
Scenario: a developer switching context every hour
Take someone building things in Xcode, then jumping into an adobe beta generative fill round in Photoshop for UI mockups, then back to Slack calls. The desk has an M3 MacBook Pro closed and driving a Studio Display, with AirPods Pro 2 nearby. Before AirBuddy, reconnecting headphones after a walking break meant opening Control Centre, waiting for the Bluetooth list to settle, and hoping the Mac chose the right device. Now a single tap in the menu bar drops a list of every nearby Apple headset. One click joins the AirPods Pro, and the listening mode—Adaptive for the morning hum of a café, then Noise Cancellation once the coffee rush hits—switches from the same compact panel. The developer never touches System Settings, and the headphones feel like part of the Mac rather than a separate gadget.
Headset not showing: open the case lid closer to the Mac
A few friction points surface in the first week, and most have straightforward remedies.
- Headset not appearing in the status window. If AirPods or Beats refuse to show up, open the case lid within a metre of the Mac, wait three seconds, then refresh the AirBuddy panel. The app listens for Apple’s proximity broadcast; thick desk shelves or a Mac tucked behind a monitor can dampen the signal enough to delay discovery.
- Magic Handoff claims a device but does not move it. Handoff relies on the same iCloud account signed into both Macs. If one machine sits on a guest network or has Bluetooth toggled off in Control Centre (not just disconnected, but fully off), the handshake fails. Re-enable Bluetooth, confirm both Macs show the same Apple ID in System Settings, then try again.
- Usage history shows gaps. AirBuddy records only when the app is running. If the Mac slept for six hours or the daemon was stopped by a background-task manager, those hours stay blank. Keeping the helper running—and exempting it from any “cleaner” utilities—keeps the timeline complete.
- Custom connection modes do not fire. A mode set to enable Noise Cancellation and lower volume to 22% only triggers when AirBuddy itself initiates the connection. If you connect the AirPods through the macOS Bluetooth menu instead, the mode sits idle. Train the muscle memory to use the AirBuddy menu bar or keyboard shortcut for every connection.
First days: setting it up to feel invisible
After installing airbuddy 3, spend ten minutes on three small adjustments that pay back daily. First, pick a menu bar icon style. The battery indicator is the most discreet: a tiny circle that fills or drains, no brand mark, no colour pop. It belongs in the same strip as the clock and Wi‑Fi indicator. Second, assign a keyboard shortcut for the status window—something like ⌃⌥A—so the panel appears without lifting a hand from the keyboard. Third, set a connection mode for the AirPods you use most. A simple rule of “enable Transparency, set volume to 18%” means every connection lands at a known, comfortable listening level. After that, the app mostly vanishes into the background, surfacing only when a battery hits 10% or a new device wanders into range.
Three devices in play: a late-afternoon AirBuddy routine
Imagine a late-afternoon stretch with three devices in play. The Mac Studio on the desk is the main machine; a MacBook Pro sits open to the left, running an airbuddy beta build for a side project. AirPods Max hang on a stand between them. An iPhone 15 Pro is charging on a MagSafe puck.
You tap the menu bar battery indicator. The small status window drops down and shows the AirPods Max at 72%, the iPhone at 89%, and the MacBook Pro at 54%. Below them, grouped together, the AirPods Pro case sits at 93% with the left bud at 100% and the right at 97%—a small imbalance from a phone call earlier. Nothing needs charging yet, so you click away.
Half an hour later, a Zoom call starts. You pick up the AirPods Max, put them on, and press ⌃⌥A. The large status window slides in from the right edge of the screen. The Max listing shows a Connect button; one click joins them to the Mac Studio. The custom connection mode kicks in: listening mode switches to Transparency so you can hear your own voice, volume settles at 24%, and the microphone switches to the headset automatically. The call runs forty minutes. Midway through, you glance at the menu bar: the Max are at 61%, and the indicator has turned amber—plenty for the rest of the call, but worth a charge afterwards.
After the call, you need to move the Magic Trackpad over to the MacBook Pro. You open AirBuddy’s device list on the Mac Studio, find the trackpad under Peripherals, and click Handoff. Two seconds later the trackpad is controlling the MacBook Pro as if it had always been paired there. The handoff is silent; no confirmation dialogue, no PIN code. To bring it back, you repeat the gesture from the MacBook Pro side.
Before shutting down for the evening, you open the usage history panel. The day shows 2h 14m of listening and 48m of talk time. The right AirPod Pro bud drained 3% faster than the left during a morning podcast session—a useful nudge to clean the ear sensor on that side. You close the lid on the AirPods, see the case battery settle at 88%, and power down the Mac Studio. AirBuddy’s last act of the day is a quiet one: the menu bar icon shows a lightning bolt next to the iPhone as it begins charging overnight.
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