Use your Mac as a Bluetooth Keyboard for your iPhone

Share this:

How many times have there been where you’re working both on your Mac and your iPhone or iPad when you suddenly find the need to copy and paste a text from your Mac to your iPhone. You would also wish that there must be an easy way to type into your iPhone from your Mac’s keyboard! At this point, you’re probably wishing that you can use your Mac as a bluetooth keyboard for your iPhone

Well, there is indeed a solution.

Here’s how you can use your Mac as a Bluetooth Keyboard for the iPhone

The app that I discovered recently is Eltima’s Typeeto. Its an app that usually costs $19.99. As of the publishing of this post, it’s currently on promotion at $9.99 on the Mac App Store. But if you do prefer to not purchase it off the Mac App Store, just follow this link and you’ll automatically get a special 15% off discount coupon on the retail price.

use your mac as a bluetooth keyboard on your iphone

You can also buy it directly from Eltima’s website which offers you a trial to test it you.

Once installed, you would need to first connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac. The Typeeto app does tell you how to do it when try to add a new device in Typeeto after you start up the app.

typeeto_menubar
Typeeto on the menubar
connect-phone

Typeeto actually works on any device that supports using a Bluetooth Keyboard as well. The following are the list of devices that Eltima’s team has tested Typeeto against.

Typeeto supported devices
Typeeto supported devices

Pairing the device of your choice is simply just how you would usually do it on your Mac. The following are screenshots of me pairing my iPhone 6s to my Mac.

MacOS Bluetooth menu
Pairing the iPhone in MacOS Bluetooth menu
Confirming the pairing of the iPhone
Confirming the pairing of the iPhone
Typeeto detects a newly paired iPhone
Typeeto detects a newly paired iPhone

After pairing the iPhone, or any other device, you’re ready to use Typeeto. But before that, let’s take a look at the preferences and settings that you can set with the app.

Typeeto preference - general settings
General settings

The General settings are pretty self explanatory. I would recommend setting the paste text to device shortcut key combination to something that you would be comfortable with. The default alt-cmd-v works ok but change it if there’s another key combination that you prefer. Also, turn off the sending of usage statistics if you prefer to be private.

Devices settings
Devices settings

The Devices settings is important too. I recommend setting a Quick Launch shortcut key to have the ability to easily switch between your devices, especially when you have more that one that you intend to use with your Mac. Otherwise you would always need to click on the device you want to connect to using Typeeto’s menu bar.

Themes
Themes

As for the last Theme settings. I don’t think I need to explain it any more than the screenshot itself. ?

Using Typeeto on your Mac as a Bluetooth Keyboard for the iPhone

I’ve had Typeeto running on my Mac for about a week now and I’d have to say that it’s been quite interesting using it. I actually have the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 Keyboard for Mac that I’ve been using to type on both my Mac and my iPhone when I need it. However, I usually just leave the keyboard, though portable at work. So anywhere else, I would find myself missing the external bluetooth keyboard when typing long emails on my phone.

Thus the “interesting” description of Typeeto. Interesting because it works really well. I’ve used another app in the past but it didn’t work too well for me as it didn’t work most of the time. Typeeto has been pretty stable in my testing over the week so far. But since I already have the Logitech K811 external keyboard. I usually find myself just switching my keyboard over to my iPhone and I’d start typing away.

But Typeeto does have one major advantage which is its ability to paste text that’s been copied from the Mac. This is definitely a very useful feature, especially typing over complex passwords that I used for my online accounts. (Seriously guys, using 1Password to generate unique and complex passwords you can’t remember is the only way to go now).

typeeto-copy-paste

One thing to note is that this copy-pasting feature has a maximum text length limit of 1024 characters, which actually isn’t too bad. You can copy roughly a full paragraph with it as you’ll see in the video capture I took below. The way it works is that Typeeto would basically retype for you character by character onto your device. This presents an interesting behaviour if you turn on autocorrect on the iPhone. Any wrongly typed words that are copied would be automatically corrected if possible. The video below shows this behaviour when I copied over a Lorem ipsum text from my Mac to my iPhone. This is definitely something to be aware of.

Using Typeeto

Final verdict

At the usual price of $19.99, you may think that it’s a little on the pricier side. However, if you compare it with the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 Keyboard for Mac that costs close to $90 on Amazon, you basically get the same feature of the external bluetooth keyboard at a 80% discount. And if copying text and pasting it to your device is a must have feature, well, Typeeto is an obvious choice for you. That’s just something you can’t do with any external bluetooth keyboard.

Typeeto has been a solid software making the Mac as a bluetooth keyboard for any device that supports it. So if you find yourself needing it, it’s one that I would recommend quite easily.

typeeto-icon
Purchase Typeeto from this link and get a 15% discount off the retail price!

Disclosure: I was offered a press copy of the software to test and write this article.

Share this:

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.