Greg Morris

MX Master 3 Freezing On Mac? Here is The Fix!

After denying it for quite a while, I succumbed to getting myself a third-party mouse, and you can’t buy anything other than the MX Master 3. It’s more comfortable, more accurate and is packed full of power user features that allow you to mould its usage to your will. There is one small issue though, every so often an update comes around which causes the mouse to freeze and disconnect at random intervals — but here’s the fix.

If you have this issue, each time the MX Master 3 freezes up you will notice random Bluetooth devices connect and disconnect before disappearing. This happens at random intervals and lasts for anywhere between a few seconds up to a minute. All the time you will be unable to use the mouse. It looks something like this.

The issue stems from Apples use of hand off. An amazing feature that allows you to move seamlessly from device to device with minimal fuss — but also with a tendency to break things that don’t work with it. If you’ve got your mouse paired to more than one device using the same iCloud, Apple is trying to sync them across all of them and failing.

The MX Master supports up to three devices with the click of a button, so I have no idea why iCloud is trying to do this, but they broke it nonetheless. To fix this, head into System Preferences > General > and untick the box next to ‘Allow handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices’.

⚠️
You will suffer if you use AirPods or something meant to use handoff between your devices — but your mouse will function as it should!
I like these things, you might too