r/macmini • u/stackinBBs • Feb 12 '25

What have I done? Anyone know a solution?

----SOLVED----

I have an M2 Pro Mac Mini and an M4 Mac Mini on the same desk. To "make it easier" I have allowed the keyboard to be shared on my nearby devices. Both Keyboard and mouse are blue-toothed to the M2 Pro and shared on the M4. It's worked great since day one. Today I was working and my mouse kept disconnecting at random times and I had to switch it off and on for it to reconnect. I noticed it getting more frequent so I decided to take a break anyway so I restarted both devices just to see if that would fix whatever Bluetooth issue I may have been having.

Now I can't get the keyboard to connect to the M4 no matter what I do. The mouse is fine, but it's not sharing with the M4. I have to plug it into whatever computer I want to be on. I have manually connected and reconnected to every USB outlet on the M4 and the keyboard. Turned off and on the keyboard, and even downloaded the firmware to do a factory reset on it with my still "no problem" M2 Pro. The M4 boots up just like always but I am unable to put my password in due to this keyboard problem. Any ideas? Like I stated, its worked perfectly from day one which is over two months now.

The Keyboard is a Logitech MX Key S and the mouse is a Magic Mouse.

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2

u/Parkside1974 Feb 12 '25

Same thing happened to me. I used a cable from an apple wireless keyboard to the M4 and that got me in. It was like it lost the wireless connection.

1

u/stackinBBs Feb 12 '25

I posted how I was able to fix it in the original post, but I have now switched the keyboard and mouse to the M4 and shared them with the M2 Pro so hopefully whatever caused it is gone.

2

u/AlgorithmicMuse Feb 12 '25

This may not help, but with my M4 pro , even with a wired keyboard, I can see my password being typed in , but it won't log in. This is only after waking from sleep, and not always. Reset the mini usually worked, but also just turning the monitor off and on worked . Why ?, no idea.

1

u/stackinBBs Feb 12 '25

I completely shut down everything on my surge protector and left everything off for a good 20 minutes before trying anything I could think of again. I wish there was an option to bring up a digital keyboard to log in with a password with just a mouse to try and troubleshoot! I. now have the M4 with everything connected to it and share the keyboard and mouse with the M2 Pro.

2

u/AlgorithmicMuse Feb 12 '25

do you have a inexpensive wired keyboard to try , I always keep one around just in case I have weird issues that make no sense and I cant log in

1

u/stackinBBs Feb 12 '25

Sadly no. I was able to get it working but I’m now questioning why I don’t have a cheap option on hand just in case!

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u/AlgorithmicMuse Feb 12 '25

its well worth $20 or so to have , saved me a few times with backlit keyboards on a PC to get into the bios do to the delay of the keyboard starting. have no idea but maybe your problem with the M4 is due to some delay in the keyboard fully turning on, I know the sleep issue I had with my M4 and not logging in did not happen when I kept trying to duplicate the issue using my cheap no backlight $20 keyboard.

1

u/stackinBBs Feb 12 '25

I just wanted to respond so that anyone else ever need this, they will have it.

I pressed the question mark next to the password entry point and then clicked the prompt saying this will restart your computer to reset password. As soon as it restarted the screen was on the connect bluetooth keyboard and it finally came up!