monnect

Switch a Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard between two Macs with one click — no cable, no KVM, no Universal Control.

  

Apple's Magic peripherals can only be paired with one host at a time. If you use the same mouse and keyboard with two Macs (say, a personal and a work MacBook), the usual "fix" is plugging in a cable every time you switch, because the wired connection re-pairs instantly. monnect replaces that ritual with a menu bar app: click Pull Input Here on the Mac you want to use, give the peripherals a nudge, and they jump over.

Mac you're sitting at                    Mac that has the peripherals
  "Pull Input Here" ── local network ──▶ unpairs the devices
  pairs + connects them ◀── devices are now free to switch

How it works (the interesting part)

Magic devices store exactly one pairing — pairing with Mac B invalidates Mac A's link key, and a paired device flatly ignores connection attempts from any other host (page timeouts, not discoverable). So "keep it paired to both and reconnect" is impossible. What does work, verified on real hardware:

1. The current owner unpairs the device (blueutil --unpair)
2. The new owner clears its stale record, then pairs fresh — Magic devices pair PIN-less, so this is fully programmatic
3. The device answers a new host only while awake — wiggle the mouse / tap a key during the switch; a power-cycle (off → 3 s → on) is the reliable fallback. The claim loop patiently retries for 90 seconds.

The two Macs coordinate over the local network (Bonjour discovery + a token-authenticated TCP message), so neither Mac needs SSH access to the other for the app to work.

Requirements

• Two Macs on the same local network, macOS 14+
• blueutil: brew install blueutil
• The peripherals paired at least once with each Mac (plug in the cable once per Mac, or pair via Bluetooth settings)

Install the menu bar app

Easiest — Homebrew (installs blueutil too), on each Mac:

brew install --cask eimen2018/tap/monnect

Or download the notarized DMG from Releases and drag Monnect.app to Applications. It's signed and notarized, so it opens like any other app.

Or build from source on each Mac:

git clone https://github.com/Eimen2018/monnect && cd monnect
./app/make-app.sh
cp -R app/dist/Monnect.app ~/Applications/

Then run setup on the first Mac:

~/Applications/Monnect.app/Contents/MacOS/Monnect init

It lists your paired devices, lets you pick the ones to switch, and prints the exact Monnect init --token … command to run on the second Mac (the shared token is how the two instances trust each other).

Finally, on both Macs: open ~/Applications/Monnect.app, approve the Bluetooth, local network, and firewall prompts, and add Monnect to System Settings → General → Login Items.

Release builds are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Self-built copies are ad-hoc signed, which is fine on the Mac that built them.

Daily use

Click the keyboard icon in the menu bar of the Mac you want to use → Pull Input Here → wiggle the mouse and tap a key (or power-cycle stubborn devices). Filled icon = peripherals are here. There's also a CLI for scripting and hotkey tools:

~/Applications/Monnect.app/Contents/MacOS/Monnect status   # where are they?
~/Applications/Monnect.app/Contents/MacOS/Monnect pull     # bring them here
~/Applications/Monnect.app/Contents/MacOS/Monnect release  # let them go

Alternative: plain shell scripts

Prefer no app? The *.sh scripts in the repo root do the same thing over SSH instead of Bonjour: setup.sh once on each Mac (it writes config.sh — see config.example.sh for the format), then switch.sh on whichever Mac should have the peripherals. Requirements on both Macs: Remote Login enabled, key-based SSH to each other, and Bluetooth permission granted in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Bluetooth to your terminal app and to /usr/libexec/sshd-keygen-wrapper (macOS attributes SSH sessions to that binary — granting /usr/sbin/sshd alone is not enough on recent macOS). raycast-grab-input.sh wraps switch.sh as a Raycast script command.

Limitations, honestly

• The wake-up nudge is part of the ritual. The device firmware only listens while awake; no software on the Mac side can remove that. Wiggle / tap usually suffices; power-cycle always works.
• Mid-switch, the devices are paired to neither Mac. If a switch is interrupted, rerun it — rerunning is always safe. Worst case, one cable plug-in restores the status quo.
• Both Macs must be awake and on the same network for the handoff message. If the other Mac is unreachable, the claim still runs (useful when it already released, e.g. it's shut down and you released beforehand).
• Two Macs per token. More than two would need a smarter "who has them" protocol than this app carries.

Security notes

• The peer protocol is a single "release" command over plaintext TCP on your LAN, authenticated by a shared random token (UUID) that lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Monnect/config.json on both Macs.
• Someone on your network who captures the token could unpair your peripherals (annoyance, not access). Don't run it on networks you don't trust; rotate the token by re-running Monnect init on both Macs.
• The app makes no network connections beyond your LAN and collects nothing.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
abort … absence of access to Bluetooth API (or silently empty output)	The app running blueutil lacks Bluetooth permission. GUI app: approve the prompt. Terminal: add your terminal app in Privacy & Security → Bluetooth. Over SSH: add /usr/libexec/sshd-keygen-wrapper.
"Other Mac: not found" in the menu	Both instances running? Same token? Local network permission approved on both? Same Wi-Fi/LAN?
Claim keeps failing	The device wasn't woken inside the 90 s window, or it's out of Bluetooth range. Power-cycle it and pull again.
Devices reconnect to the old Mac by themselves	The old Mac's Monnect isn't running, so nothing unpaired there. Launch it and pull again.

License

MIT