Having the Bluetooth icon shown right in the menu bar makes it easily accessible and saves you some keystrokes while toggling Bluetooth. However, there is an even faster way to toggle the Bluetooth on or off on your Mac. Read on the find out all about it.
What I like most about Mac is its thought-out customization options. Almost every setting in Mac is designed to get your work done in as few keystrokes as possible.
One of the things in this vein is its ability to put quick settings— Wi-fi, Bluetooth, volume— on the top menubar, so they are just a click away should you need to toggle them.
In this article, I will show you how can put the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar on a Mac and then I will show you an even better workflow, which reduces this 10-second drudgery of toggling Bluetooth to just 1 second. Read on.
Follow these steps to put the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar on Mac —
→ Step 1: Click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of your menubar, then click on System Settings…
→ Step 2: In the system settings window, scroll down to locate the Control Centre. Clicking on the control center will bring a bunch of options to the right.
→ Step 3: In this pane, locate Bluetooth and toggle its setting to Show in Menu Bar, as shown in the screenshot above.
This will put the Bluetooth icon in the top menu bar which will save you some time next time you are going to turn your Bluetooth on or off.
However, this approach is still less than ideal. Even with the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, you first need to drag your cursor to the icon at the top of your screen and make at least two clicks.
This can be avoided if you use the built-in Spotlight or one of its beefier alternatives Raycast.
How to quickly turn the Bluetooth on or off on a Mac
Toggle Bluetooth using Spotlight
If you are using the built-in Spotlight, press the key combo Command + Space. This will bring you a search bar. In this search bar, type “Bluetooth”, which will put the toggle box right in the first result.
You can turn the Bluetooth on or off right from this toggle box.
This was faster but it wasn’t amazing. You still needed to move your cursor to click the toggle button.
What if I told you there was an even better way?
Turning Bluetooth on or off using Raycast
Raycast is a free alternative to Spotlight, just a hundred times better.
Once you install it, you can pull it up with the default key combo Option + Space or you can simply disable Spotlight altogether and reassign the usual key combo Command + Space to Raycast.
Either way, pressing the key combination brings up the search box, just like Spotlight. In this search box, you can simply type tb (short for Toggle Bluetooth) and press Enter.
If you are doing it for the first time, your computer may ask you if you want to permit Raycast to access your Bluetooth. Grant the permission and your Bluetooth will be turned off.
This workflow is fast, frictionless, and most important of all, doesn’t let you lose focus from your work.
If you liked the Raycast workflow, you will love the list of my favorite top 10 Raycast extensions and the list of apps that you can replace with Raycast.
Thanks for reading. You have been awesome.
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