A couple months ago, we wrote about the Continuity Activation Tool, an app that hacks Continuity into older Macs that can’t support Handoff, Instant Hotspot, and AirDrop by default.
The only problem? It was rough: you needed to physically break open your Mac and replace it’s wireless and Bluetooth card. Dongles just wouldn’t work. But guess what? Two months later, and things are very, very different.
First, a word on Continuity. Introduced in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Continuity is not available on every Mac because it depends upon Bluetooth 4.0 LE to work, there are many third-party cards which, theoretically, you can plug into your Mac. By default, Apple doesn’t recognize these third-party solutions to enable Continuity… unless you use this tool.
As we already said, previously, the Continuity Activity Tool only supported Macs that could be hacked open to insert a third-party Bluetooth card. But the new 2.0 version adds compatability Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongles, allowing many Macs from 2008 and later to easily upgrade to Continuity.
What does this mean? If you own a 2011 MacBook Air or a Mac mini, you might be able to activate Continuity with no hardware upgrades required? Otherwise, there’s a number of cheap dongles on the web that will make your Mac Continuity-compatabile.
Download the latest version of the OS X Continuity Activation Tool here.
Via: ZDNet
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
4 responses to “How to add Continuity to any Mac using just a cheap Bluetooth dongle”
where is the info on which “new airport ext card”?
the newest card– will they be compatible with all mac older models?
is there a website with info/specs/list of compatible dongles?
great headsup – but no info HERE.
Looking at the chart am I to take it that I am still out of luck with my mid 2011 iMac? or am I just reading the chart wrong?
If it’s got an Atheros Wi-fi chip, then yes. But if you have a Broadcom wi-fi chip, you’re good with either a new Airport Extreme card or a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle (the iMacs from 2009-2011 are covered there).
Thanks for the info. As my crappy luck would have it, I have the Atheros chip. Still no continuity for me…………….