I Use This Mac App to Connect to All My Bluetooth Devices With One Click
Over time, I’ve become somewhat of an audio agnostic when it comes to my Mac. Sometimes I’ll use my AirPods Pro, but when I want to listen to music or have Zoom meetings, I switch to the Sony XM5, mostly for convenience and better sound quality. When I’m writing, I like to listen to background music on my JBL Flip 6 via Spotify. This means I spend a significant amount of time connecting Bluetooth devices, switching audio output, and disconnecting them when macOS inevitably has connectivity issues.
This dance of first connecting the device via the Bluetooth menu and then switching to audio output from Control Center takes a considerable amount of time. I went in search of a reliable indie macOS utility that would surely fix my problem, and found one in ToothFairy .
How to Use ToothFairy to Connect to Devices in One Click
ToothFairy is a Bluetooth utility that adds a dedicated button for each Bluetooth device right to your menu bar with a single click. Click once, and the device is connected (assuming it’s on and near you). Click again to disconnect. It couldn’t be simpler. No menu hunting required.
And it’s not just audio devices—the feature also works with Bluetooth keyboards, mice, and other accessories.
To get started, open the ToothFairy app and click the Plus button to add a new device. Select a device that you have already connected once using the Bluetooth menu. Then customize the menu bar icon. If you, like me, will be using this app for three different devices, make sure you use different icons for them as well. Then you can also choose to view the battery status for the device (only if the device supports this feature). At any time, you can right-click on the device icon to view the battery status in any case.
Click Record Keyboard Shortcut to record a keyboard shortcut that will allow you to quickly connect or disconnect from your device.
Finally, ToothFairy supports automation in the form of Bash scripts that you can execute when a device is connected or disconnected. You can use the following command to open any app immediately after connecting a device. I use this feature to open Spotify when connecting my JBL Flip 6 (but not any other device).
Click the Advanced button and enable the Run shell script after connection option. Then enter the following code in the text box, replacing the “Application name” part with the exact name of the application you want to open.
open -a “Application Name
Then click OK. Once you connect the device, the application you selected will open automatically.
Once you add a device, it will automatically appear in your menu bar. Every device appears in the menu bar, so if you feel like your menu bar is cluttered, try using a menu bar manager app like Ice or Barbee .
ToothFairy is available on the App Store for a one-time fee of $6.99; it is also part of the SetApp subscription .