Two MacBooks, One Bluetooth Speaker

Problem

I have 2 MacBooks and 1 Bluetooth speaker in my current desk setup, and it has been the bane of my existence since I resumed working from home. I use only 1 MacBook at a time, and I switch between them depending on what I'm working on. The speaker can connect to both MacBooks at the same time, but, and it's a big BUTT, I can't use Spotify on either machine if both are connected. It's a weird issue with Spotify allowing you to control music with multiple devices so if I press "play" on one MacBook, the other MacBook will pause the music because it is also trying to play.

And I'm not gonna remember to close Spotify and/or disconnect the speaker every time I switch between laptops, so... I did the developer thing and had the AI write me a script that I spent the next day rewriting because it didn't work on the first, or second, or third try 😂. Plot twist, I had to do some manual research (sources linked below).

This tutorial was written as of sleepwatcher version 2.2.1

Tip:

$ means run the command in your terminal (without the dollar sign)

Synopsis

It's a simple script that uses two packages, blueutil and sleepwatcher.

blueutil

  • Tool that allows you to control Bluetooth on macOS
  • Can view devices, connect, disconnect, etc.

sleepwatcher

  • Tool that allows you to run scripts on sleep/wake events on macOS

Solution

  • Install Homebrew if you don't have it already

    https://brew.sh/

  • Install blueutil and sleepwatcher using homebrew

    $ brew install blueutil sleepwatcher

  • Get the MAC address of your bluetooth device. It should be in the format (XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX)

    $ blueutil --paired

  • Create a ./sleep file in your HOME directory (cd ~) and fill in the following to disconnect your bluetooth device

    #!/bin/bash 
DEVICE_ADDRESS="XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX"
blueutil --disconnect $DEVICE_ADDRESS

  • Create a ./wakeup file in your HOME directory (cd ~) and fill in the following to connect your bluetooth device

    #!/bin/bash
# Sleep for 10 seconds before attempting connection
sleep 10
DEVICE_ADDRESS="XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX"
blueutil --connect $DEVICE_ADDRESS

  • Make the files executable

    $ cd ~
$ chmod +x .sleep .wakeup

User Agent Setup (Required):

  • Symlink the sample plist file (which already lists .sleep and .wakeup in the HOME directory, so no need to configure manually), to the ~/Library/LaunchAgents directory to install the user agent

    $ ln -sfv "$(brew --cellar)/sleepwatcher/2.2.1/homebrew.mxcl.sleepwatcher.plist" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

    This tutorial was written as of sleepwatcher version 2.2.1 so the plist file may be different for you. Check the version you have installed by running $ brew info sleepwatcher and replace the version number in the command above with the version you have installed.

  • Load the configuration with launchd

    $ launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.sleepwatcher.plist

System Agent Setup (Optional):

The difference between the user agent and the system agent is that the user agent runs when you log in, and the system agent runs when the computer starts up

  • Symlink the sample plist file (which already lists .sleep and .wakeup in the HOME directory, so no need to configure manually), to the /Library/LaunchAgents directory to install the system agent

    $ sudo ln -sfv "$(brew --cellar)/sleepwatcher/2.2.1/homebrew.mxcl.sleepwatcher.plist" /Library/LaunchAgents/

    This tutorial was written as of sleepwatcher version 2.2.1 so the plist file may be different for you. Check the version you have installed by running $ brew info sleepwatcher and replace the version number in the command above with the version you have installed.

  • Load the configuration with launchd

    $ sudo launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) /Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.sleepwatcher.plist

And voila, you're done! 🎉 Now when one MacBook sleeps, it automatically disconnects from the speaker, and since I've run this setup on my other machine too, when it wakes up, it automatically connects to the speaker. And vice versa.

Sources:

If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on Twitter.