Chosen Solution
I’ve upgraded a 2009 iMac to Monterey and I’m not able to get my keyboard to pair. When I click pair, it appears to be waiting for my number to keyed into the keyboard, but it won’t display the number to enter until I hit return.
This seems to be an issue with the A1016 not playing nicely with Monterey in general. I found a solution to this from What_is_a_sesame on an Apple discussions thread. As per the OP: Step 1: Install Homebrew for macOS Copy/paste the following command (taken from the Homebrew website https://brew.sh) into Terminal and type Return /bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" Step 2: Install blueutil with Homebrew Still in Terminal, enter the following command and wait for it to complete: brew install blueutil Step 3: Use blueutil to discover your Bluetooth peripherals and get its MAC address Using blueutil is pretty simple. There is a good documentation of what it can do out there, but you can also simply type in Terminal : blueutil –help From now on, make sure: – Your Bluetooth module is on by clicking on the BT icon in the menu bar, – Your keyboard is in ‘Discovery’ mode (you just turned it on, it isn’t connected to anything else and its green light is blinking) Run the command: blueutil –inquiry to discover the available Bluetooth peripherals in your area. It will give you something like this: (base) you@your-computer ~ % blueutil –inquiry address: xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx, not connected, not favourite, not paired, name: “Apple Wireless Keyboard”, recent access date: 2021-11-06 18:22:39 +0000 You may have more than one peripheral here, be careful to select which one is most likely your keyboard. Note the ‘address’ part. That’s the MAC (not Macintosh) address of your keyboard which is its unique network identifier, with x hexadecimal numbers between 0 and f. You want to highlight and copy that part with Cmd+C. Now that you have your keyboard’s MAC address all you have to do is run the following command: blueutil –pair xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx 0000 The ‘0000’ is the PIN key we specify so we have to type the same on the keyboard to finalize pairing. Be careful, here, after you press enter, nothing happens. It’s a bug of the current BT API embedded in Monterey. Just wait a few seconds and then enter 0000 and press Return on your external keyboard. Pairing should then be successful and you would be able to use your ancient but nicely designed keyboard with your modern Mac. If not, you can try several things (for which I have no proof they actually help): Reboot your computerEnter the PIN number by using the main keyboard, or conversely, the numeric keypadMake sure that your keyboard isn’t already paired — with blueutil, you can check that by running the command blueutil –pairedReset your computer’s SMC and NVRAM (How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063)Reset the keyboard by removing the batteries for ~20 seconds, putting them back in and turning the keyboard on againReplace the batteries Mine was reluctant to pair until I reset the SMC and PRAM once more. Good luck!
I take no credit for devising this solution, I’m just reposting it here to make sure perfectly good keyboards don’t end up in landfills
Hi Ouch that’s a unwanted surprise isn’t it , sometime when using a patcher to get unsupported devices updated can cause these sort of things to happen But before we come to a conclusion that’s that’s the issue I would forget the device in settings and the re-pair it Hopefully this answers your question Thanks:-)
I just spoke to Apple on the phone. They literally have deprecated the keyboard. They’ve deemed that their customers must buy a new one instead. Whoever is responsible for this money grab has alienated customers.
Good to know. I thought I’ve thrown mine away years ago when I moved 10 years ago but just found in one of the boxes I haven’t opened since then. I tended to use it with my mac pro 2013 but now that I know that it takes some effort to get it working with monterey I might ditch it for a few bucks at a refubisher. I’d prefer using it with my mac pro though. The other options would be keeping it for some other device or even mod it with an arduino and a thinkpad trackpoint. The space over the T-cursor-keys should have enough room.
Hi all - thanks so much for the help. I quite like this keyboard. I had the connection issue over and over. I reset the mac, pulled the batteries in and out a few times. After I entered the pair command i entered 0000 then enter on the A1016 - after a couple of tries - bam! It works. You are all awesome!
