OS X Yosemite Part 2: Handoff on All Your Macs

31/10/14 07:47 Filed in: Technology

Continuity between Macs is one of the bigger features included in the upgrade to Yosemite. Having all of your Mac and iOS devices communicate with one another and share functions with another is a great features. Starting a paper on your Mac and then handing it off to your iOS device when you hit the road is very convenient and allows you to use the best device for various circumstances in your life and not have to figure out a way to get the document you are working on to the devices you have chosen to use. It is also convenient to do things like answer the phone on the device that happens to be closest to you in the moment. Overall, continuity and handoff are great additions to the Apple eco-system.

But like any new set of features there is a cutoff on what devices can use the features. Handoff needs bluetooth 4.0 to function so any device that doesn’t have that version of bluetooth is left out. Also, Apple chose to leave out some of it’s older Macs that do have bluetooth 4.0 like the mid 2011 Mac Mini that I use for my server. This is frustrating because my Mac Mini has everything it needs to make Handoff work. So I went on a search to see if I could work around that requirement and found a tool that enables continuity on older Macs, even those that don’t currently have bluetooth 4.0 but could add it with a card or USB device.

The Continuity Activation Tool was created by a group over on Github and you can read more about it HERE. The tool basically changes Apple’s system check and changes the no to using continuity to a yes. It is a simple to use tool and very easy to run. Just download the zip and run the tool. On their Github page, they let you know what Macs it works on and what is needed to make it run on each Mac.

In this screencast I walk through using the tool to enable handoff. I also cover how to use handoff on your Mac and show how each function works. As always thanks for watching! If you have any questions feel free to leave them here or on my Youtube Channel.

Tags: Tutorials, Apple, Mac OSX