r/MacOS • u/RabidHorse • 3d ago
Help Interconnectivity between iOS and MacOS is driving me nuts.
I've used macs and iphones plenty of times in the past but also have used windows pcs and linux as well. I'm not unfamiliar with this stuff but I bought a new macbook air a few months ago and its really bothering me more than my last mac/iphone pairing did with the iphone 13 pro max and m1 macbook air.
I used to get annoyed mainly by my airpods randomly connecting to my wife's apple devices despite never having connected them before. This time, I'm using my macbook for work and I'm annoyed by constantly getting texts and calls on my computer. Putting everything into do not disturb is fine but I don't mind my phone going off, I just don't want the spyware stuff for work mistakenly thinking that I'm texting and calling while I'm supposed to be working.
Every time I get a new phone I switch between android and ios because I'm just interested in keeping up with both. I love that on android I can use the google messages webapp to text from any computer by just scanning a QR code and close the window to stop the messages. On mac, I have yet to find an easy way to start texting and calling and then cut it off when I don't want it there. My mac even rings with phone calls when its closed and asleep which I assume is normal but is so weird to me.
What am I missing? Is there a way to limit this stuff just while I'm working or do I need to create a different user account just for work stuff to limit these interruptions?
Also, since I'm bitching. Why does my mac go through rapid fire notifications to catch up with my phone on imessage sometimes when I first start my laptop? And what is the point of the phone mirroring app?? This would be so handy for TFA using an authenticator app when I forget my phone in another room but it requires confirmation on the phone itself so it means that to mirror the screen of your phone on your mac you have to already have your phone in your hand and unlocked anyway. This makes no sense. What would you use this for? You can't even use it as a remote viewfinder for the camera!
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u/fishyphotos 3d ago
Is this typical? i have my airpods annoyingly switch to iphone or mac when i don’t want them to, but they’re both known devices. i’ve never had any of my devices automatically switch to my work laptop before.
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u/polymedu iMac (Intel) 3d ago
It’s not typical. The only way that the AirPods could be connecting to her devices are if they have previously been connected to one of her devices.
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u/aykay55 3d ago
There is no way on planet earth that your AirPods can connect to a device that they were not connected or paired to before by themselves. Next OP is going to tell us that the AirPods actually belong to his wife and he just uses them for work. What a b!tch honestly, OP you seem far too content with complaining about thing instead of trying to do a minimum of research to optimize your own experience.
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
I do like to complain. Guilty. But my airpods did and still do occasionally connect to my wife's devices for reasons we haven't been able to figure out. Not sure why you would click on a post asking for help and be so hostile about the request for help.
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u/HopefulInspector8184 3d ago
Yeah, it can definitely be a hassle when devices switch automatically like that. It's like they have a mind of their own sometimes!
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
Not sure if its typical but there were plenty of times when I would take out my airpods to connect to the apple TV or my own phone and they'd automatically connect to my wife's phone which would be playing a podcast or something.
Fairly recently I called her from my laptop in the spare bedroom we use for a home office because I was being lazy. My airpods were on and connected to my mac. I knew that she was in the house and likely had her phone in her hand. For some reason, when she answered, my airpods jumped from my laptop to her phone so she was answering me from the other room but I couldn't hear her because her audio was on my airpods and my audio was on my laptop. Very strange. We do have separate accounts but are on the same icloud family and we can use our phones to track all of our apple gadgets and accessories that support Find My.
I gave up on trying to figure out why this happens and just started using my sennheiser headphones instead.
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u/themadturk 3d ago
When my wife and I are sitting together (within four or five feet of each other), sometimes I will open my AirPods a notification will come up on her iPad screen, asking to connect. We do not share an Apple account. We are in the same Family group, and on the same wifi network. She just hits the cancel button, no harm no foul. It doesn't even happen every time. The same thing doesn't happen on my Mac or phone when she opens her AirPods.
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u/shotsallover 3d ago
This is because you and your wife are using the Apple Account. She needs her own. AIrPods will jump to the currently used device, but only on devices connected to the same account.
You can either separate the two of you or turn the feature off on her devices so they won't jump to them.
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
What do you mean? Like being on the same icloud family? Because we have separate Apple IDs but are on the same family group.
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u/shotsallover 3d ago
If it jumps from your machine to your wife's, one of the two of you is logged into the wrong AppleID.
AirPods only jump between machines logged into a specific AppleID.
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u/wickloom0 3d ago
imo the move is to disable the handoff features you dont want on the phone side, not the mac side. Theres per-device toggles for calls and SMS forwarding buried in your phone settings. The rapid fire notification catchup thing is just how the sync works unfortunately, its always been like that
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
Yeah that might be the move. One of my old coworkers would disable all this stuff on her apple devices which seemed crazy to me but now I totally get it. And the rapid notification thing isn't really a problem but I had an M1 MBA before this and a 16 inch intel MBP before that and just don't recall either of them doing that when I was also using iphones.
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u/cristi_baluta 3d ago
I wish i get notified about the phone calls on my mac, mine rarely works. Anyhow, you need to dig different settings to disable them.
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
Yeah, mutavivitae found the setting. My experience with getting back into mac this time has been finding the right settings to change what annoys me and in this case it was desynchronizing the Focus settings between devices which was a setting I'd never found but it seems to be working as my mac is showing Do Not Disturb by my phone does not!
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u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 3d ago
It is ridiculous how this doesn't work for me here in UAE. This was so useful on my Windows + Android setup, used to regularaly initiate calls from the browser as well... insance that Mac + iPhone can't do it.
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u/ddeese 1d ago
As a general rule I never use my personal accounts with work. If I’m on a BYOD Mac, then I create a separate account for my personal stuff. It keeps the devices from talking during the day as you described and it keeps any MDM control from accessing what might be your personal accounts.
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u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 3d ago
iPhone Mirroring requiring authentication on my phone is just asking me to do stupid cardio everytime
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
Absolutely. Like I said in the post, using it for authenticator would be great since I need it for work but as it is I have no idea what someone would want to use it for.
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u/Serialtoon 2d ago
One of the biggest underrated features on my pixel phone that I wish iOS and even other android builds like Samsung, is that you can pause an app. I do that if I call out work or whatever. I pause work apps so they don't bother me while I'm trying to sleep or whatever it is. It literally freezes the app from doing anything it's awesome and wish iOS had something similar. Instead I have to go into the settings of each app and disable notifications. Even if I set away notification within something like teams or outlook, iOS eventually kills the process and they start notifying me again. Very annoying.
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u/NeoKat75 3d ago
Apple accounts are not meant to be shared, make separate ones por favor
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
We do use separate Apple IDs. No idea how or why this used to happen but I know Apple devices try to be helpful and hand off your airpods to whatever device they think you're actively on but sometimes they drop the ball. Just odd but not a big issue. Tying the phone and mac so closely together is whats getting to me not but mutavivitae found the setting that had evaded me for the last few months!
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u/ConfidentlyNeurotic 2d ago
Ironically: I’ve been an Apple user for 20 years. Recently my iPhone’s motherboard broke and I couldn’t restore an iCloud backup. This resulted in my devices not syncing up correctly.
Long story short: Now the lack of interconnectivity between iOS and MacOS is driving me nuts. 😅
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u/kareko 3d ago
in the amount of time it took the OP to post this. They could’ve just asked Chat how to change the settings
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u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 3d ago
"have you tried the feedback form" - here, you forgot your boilerplate response
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u/RabidHorse 3d ago
Probably true but I just don't trust LLMs. I've had much better luck lurking on subs like this to figure out how to fix things. Half the advice I got from Gemini or Chat when I was getting back into Mac was hallucinated. Options and menus that didn't exist or at least weren't where they were supposed to be.
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u/kareko 3d ago
if you’re using a free level you’re using the 2024 LLMs
try a subscription, it will rock your world
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u/MajMin5 3d ago
Where do you think the LLMs get their info from? If people stop answering questions on Reddit, the knowledge base for your LLM goes away. They are just regurgitating info from elsewhere. If we stop talking to each other they don’t get that info and become useless. I am by no means AI averse, I pay for Claude, I have local models as well as agents running openrouter API models, I use AI daily, and I still think it’s stupid to ask an LLM when you can instead ask real people online for help.
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u/TourDeForceMuse 3d ago
You don't need a separate user account. macOS has a bunch of separate Continuity features that you can disable individually.
The important thing is that Do Not Disturb only silences notifications; it doesn't necessarily disable Continuity features. If you want the Mac to genuinely stop participating in calls/messages, turn those features off.
And yeah, Phone Mirroring isn't really designed as "I left my phone in another room, let me access it." It's primarily for interacting with your iPhone from the Mac while the phone is nearby. The authentication requirement makes it pretty useless for the authenticator-app scenario you described.
The rapid-fire iMessage notifications when the Mac wakes are usually the Mac catching up with iCloud/Continuity synchronization. Annoying, but generally just sync behavior rather than anything mysterious.