This Free App Will Stop Your Bluetooth Headphones From Connecting to a Sleeping Mac
Here’s an all-too-familiar scenario: I’m listening to music on my phone, and for some reason my headphones connect to my sleeping MacBook. The music stops.
I bet you’ve encountered some version of this problem — it’s annoyingly common, plus you’re reading an article about how to fix it. And here’s your solution: a free, open-source app called Bluesnooze . This simple tool does one thing: It turns off your Bluetooth when your Mac goes to sleep, and turns it back on when your Mac wakes up. This prevents your computer from hijacking your headphones when you don’t want it to.
I’ve been testing it for a few days, and it works reliably. There are some downsides — using this program means that when your Mac wakes up, you have to wait a few seconds before you can use your Bluetooth devices, like your mouse, keyboard, or speakers. For me, this pause only lasted a few seconds — short enough that I barely noticed it — but it’s worth keeping in mind.
The big downside is that the app also breaks a few features you might use regularly, including “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” and some Find My Mac features. However, if you’re constantly annoyed by your MacBook cutting out audio, you might be able to live with these tradeoffs.
Bluesnooze runs from the menu bar and only offers one option: whether you want it to start automatically when you log in or not. If you don’t like the clutter in your menu bar, you can also disable the menu bar icon using the command found on the download page. This will free up space in the menu bar, but it will make it harder to tell whether the app is running or not. For this reason, I also recommend that you consider using an app to clean up your Mac’s menu bar instead of removing the icon entirely.
Bluesnooze isn’t a particularly complex app, of course, but it solves a very specific problem. Check it out if you’re thinking about putting your MacBook in a Faraday cage to keep it from stealing control of your AirPods when you don’t want it to.