screenshot of Bluesnooze menu bar item. running on macOS
Bluesnooze: a focused utility

Want to stop your sleeping Mac from connecting to Bluetooth accessories? Check out Bluesnooze, a free menu bar app for macOS made by developer Oliver Peate.

With Bluesnooze installed and running your sleeping Mac will no longer connect to any Bluetooth accessories around it, be that bluetooth headphones, a speaker bar, or input peripherals.

To put it simply: Bluetooth is switched off when your Mac sleeps, and switched on when your Mac wakes. It’s kind of crazy that macOS doesn’t offer a native setting to do this.

The app is configured to run and login (but you can turn this off), and there’s an option to hide the icon from menu bar if you’d rather let it do its thing in the background (but be aware you won’t be able to configure or control it if you do this).

You also get the option to turn off Bluetooth when your Mac shuts down, and turn Bluetooth on when it boots up and the app launches. I can’t really think of a reason why you’d do this, but it’s there all the same.

Bluesnooze will NOT work if you have the “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” feature enabled, but since this is primarily aimed at MacBooks rather than iMacs, chances are that’s not going to be an issue (after all, your Mac is asleep).

Download Bluesnooze for macOS

Want to try it out? Well, you can – Bluesnooze is free software.

But because Bluesnooze uses a private API to control Bluetooth it cannot be distributed on the App Store. Instead, you can download the latest release from the project’s GitHub. The install package is notarized by Apple for peace of mind, and a simple uninstaller is included.

You can also install Bluesnooze from Homebrew (assuming you have it set-up and configured correctly). Just run brew install bluesnooze from the Terminal app.

If you like Bluesnooze and want to throw the developer a little appreciation (and maybe some motivation to keep the tool updated) you can buy them a coffee for a couple of dollars.

Software bluetooth menu bar apps