AirBuddy
Your Mac’s new favorite sidekick
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AirBuddy 3 - Easily manage devices and switch them between Macs

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AirBuddy 3 brings over 150 new features and improvements, including a new design, powerful new ways to keep an eye on your devices, deeper media integration, revamped Magic Handoff, and many new options for automation and customization.

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Maker
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Ever sice its initial release back in early 2019, AirBuddy has been helping users manage their wireless Apple devices on macOS. AirBuddy 3 is the first major update since the launch of AirBuddy 2.6 back in 2022. I'm really happy with the improvements in this release, from the refreshed design with Liquid Glass in macOS Tahoe to the under-the-hood changes that improve reliability for Magic Handoff and device connectivity.
Hunter

I hunted — and I've been following it's evolution ever since then. v3.0 is a massive upgrade and for anyone that uses Apple peripherals, you should really check this out.

Not only that — but I built a so you can control all your devices from the comfort of your keyboard!

If i got it right - it solves the problem of apple keyboard repairing between home/work macbooks?

This is one of those apps you don't realize you need until you've used it. I especially like the battery pop-up and quick controls. Curious, was there a particular macOS limitation that was the hardest to work around while building AirBuddy?

Maker

 Thank you for the nice message!


Curious, was there a particular macOS limitation that was the hardest to work around while building AirBuddy?

For AirBuddy 3, this was definitely the now playing integration. Apple locked it down on macOS in the middle of the AirBuddy 3 beta cycle. The only way to work around that was to rewrite the integration to route all now playing data through a proxy background process instead of doing it in the main app process, which would have been a lot easier to do had it not happened after it was already implemented.

Moving peripherals between Macs without re-pairing is the feature I actually want - the usual Bluetooth handoff flow (unpair, forget, re-pair) is where I lose the most time switching machines. Is that peripheral move instant, or is there still a short handshake delay on the target Mac?

Maker

 It's still doing that under the hood, but in my experience it typically takes less than 3 seconds. Most users rely on it for switching between work and personal Macs once or twice a day, in which case that short delay is acceptable.

yeaaah AirBuddy is one of those apps i forget i'm using until i'm on someone else's Mac haha. question – i jump between 2 Macs all day, does 3.0 auto-switch my AirPods when a call starts or do i still tap manually? that's the one thing that always breaks my flow