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I use a bluetooth apple trackpad and keyboard, and once the battery hits 20% the bluetooth indicator in the menu bar starts flashing this lower battery warning. Normally, I wouldn't really care, but 20% battery is about 1-2 months of usage so the thing just flashes at me constantly for over a month.

Is there a way to disable this behavior?

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  • I have the same problem with my Magic Trackpad... I get about six more weeks of use when the battery reaches "Low" and the computer begins to harass me. Oct 18, 2011 at 20:54
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    Oddly my Trackpad batteries died for the first time recently, and I never received any warnings whatsoever, so it seems it is possible, I just don;t know what I may have done to acheive this.
    – stuffe
    Oct 20, 2011 at 11:45

2 Answers 2

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I don't mind the alert or warning, but I do mind the weeks of having a blinking icon in my Menubar. Here's what I did in Terminal:

$ cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/Bluetooth.menu/Contents/Resources/
$ sudo cp lowbatt.pdf lowbatt.backup.pdf
$ sudo cp BlueTooth_Connected.pdf lowbatt.pdf

This replaces the low battery icon with the same connected icon. I assume the icon is still "blinking" in that it's switching one for the other, but since they're now the same, you don't notice.

Now I get the 20%, 10%, 5% alerts, but no annoying blink.

This is in Lion. It's likely that system updates and perhaps even Mountain Lion will undo this, but it can probably be reapplied after updates are performed.


For Mountain Lion, the relevant files are named:

  • Bluetooth_Low_Battery.pdf
  • Bluetooth_Connected.pdf
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Here's a workaround posted on Macworld. You'll need to rename the /System/Library/CoreServices/MenuExtras/Bluetooth.menu file. Read the article before changing anything!

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