Continuity is one of the best features of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, allowing your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to all operate more seamlessly together than ever before. But there’s a problem: Continuity requires Bluetooth 4.0 LE to work, and many older Macs don’t have it.
But don’t despair. A new tool has been released makes it possible to easily hacktivate Continuity, even if Apple doesn’t want you to.
Called the Yosemite Continuity Activation Tool, the app can not only diagnose what you need to change on your Mac to enable Handoff, Instant hotspot, and AirDrop on your older Mac, but will make it easy for you to get Continuity working too.
Here’s the deal. Although Continuity absolutely 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.
Using Yosemite Continuity Activation Tool, you can hack Continuity into the following Macs: any MacBook Air from 2008 on, any Mac mini from 2009 on, any iMac from 2008 on, and any MacBook Pro from mid 2009 on.
There’s one big “but” though: you need to replace your Mac’s wireless and Bluetooth card to get Continuity to work on these older Macs. A USB dongle won’t cut it: you need to perform surgery. But if you don’t mind cutting your Mac open and installing a new card, Yosemite Continuity Activation Tool will take care of the rest.
You can download the app here.
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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.
6 responses to “This app will hack Continuity to work on your older Mac”
That’s awesome! Click. Oh… Thanks for nothing.
Somewhat misleading title. Still have to perform some major surgery to our macs. All this app does is just makes it easier to hack instead of doing it thru terminal.
Well i think they need to do more research. I have a 2009 Mid MacBook Pro and according to this i just need a new airport card. Problem is the airport card is in the screen for my model and the card that they say to get is only logic board supported. So anyone that has a 2009 MBP you are out of luck. You can download the software but you can’t upgrade the hardware.
If you’re getting the wireless card for the last-2011 MacBook Pro, make SURE it’s the part number ending in CAX, not just AX or else you’re ordering the older card that does not support Bluetooth 4.0 LE
If you like handoff and get it working on your equipment, VisuLauncher is good handoff companion app for your iPhone to scan websites, email addresses, phone numbers, map addresses and launch an appropriate app on your phone. You can then continue “on the big screen” on your Mac.
Late-08 MBP, still out of luck :(