How to make Bluetooth MIDI devices automatically connect, in the same way a Bluetooth mouse does

In macOS (or any other OS), if you have a Bluetooth mouse it works right away after booting the computer (after the first pairing when it's new), and if you turn it off and later turn in back on, it gets automatically detected by the computer and just works, no fuss, no trouble, as it should.


But with Bluetooth MIDI devices it's not like that. Every time you boot the computer you have to go to Spotlight and type "Audio MIDI Setup", then go to its top menu and click on "Window" > "Show MIDI studio", then in the new window that appears, click on the "Bluetooth icon", then in yet another window find your device name and click on the "Connect" button.


Why has it be so convoluted? And that's not the worst part. If you have to switch off the MIDI instrument for any reason (even just to save power) or it just loses power for whatever reason (battery runs out, for example), then, after switching it back on, you have to go through all of the unnecesarily long process in the previous paragraph just to be able to click again in the "Connect" button. It might not seem like much but when you have to do it over and over and over, it gets old very fast and consumes way too much time when adding all of the times you have to do it.


Why do I have to click on that "Connect" button (which is really buried into several UI windows) EVERY new time I switch on a MIDI instrument? If I don't have to do all those steps with a Bluetooth mouse, then why on earth I have to do all that with a Bluetooth MIDI instrument, which is just a Bluetooth device like any other, after all?


So my question is: Is there any workaround or any app that will detect and automatically connect Bluetooth MIDI devices without having to click on any button like the OS should be doing in the first place? (using macOS Mojave on a Macbook Air).


Thank you!

MacBook Air 11″

Posted on Jul 12, 2023 04:11 PM

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Jul 13, 2023 04:02 AM in response to OMA2k

I've never seen that behavior. My son has a midi device and he always says it works just like his mouse and wireless KB.


What year Mac is it and if you can upgrade the OS maybe you should.


We can't address why questions, those are the domain of developers and such. What we can possibly do is suggest fixes and my first is to upgrade your OS if you can.

Jul 14, 2023 02:54 PM in response to ku4hx

The computer I'm using is a Macbook Air 2015 with macOS Mojave. I've tried in someone else's Mac running macOS Ventura (latest version of macOS as of today, until Sonoma comes along in September) and I've found that MIDI Bluetooth devices work automatically upon being switched on! (no "Connect" button click required). So it seems this issue has been fixed in Ventura (I don't know if in some earlier versions as well).


Now I realize that all forum posts where I've read people complaining about this issue are all from 2019 and earlier (the time when Mojave was the latest OS) but, unfortunately, none of those posts received any reply with any possible solution whatsoever.


The problem for me is I don't want to upgrade the OS in my Macbook Air because Mojave was the latest version to support 32-bit apps and I still use some older 32-bit apps. Also, the Macbook Air 2015 can only upgrade to macOS Monterey, not to macOS Ventura, and I don't have any guarantee that this problem was already fixed in Monterey, so I could be sacrificing 32-bit compatibility for nothing. In addition to that, while Mojave is very snappy, I'm not sure of the performance hit my Macbook Air 2015 might have with Monterey.


So, couldn't this be fixed in Mojave somehow with a third-party app or maybe scripting something with Automator or similar so Bluetooth MIDI devices connect automatically after being detected? (I don't really know how Automator works so I'm not sure that's even possible).

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How to make Bluetooth MIDI devices automatically connect, in the same way a Bluetooth mouse does

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