I accidentally disconnected my mouse while on a Teams call and “managed” to connect it back within five minutes.
Context
I had been trying out this audio setup in my room, basically I connect my 2.1 CH speakers to my Mac mini to play music or sermons or anything I needed to listen to without my earphones.
I had never tried this with earphones plugged and I wasn’t sure what would happen but tried it anyway.
This was probably an hour or two before my morning stand-up, and everything was working fine. When it was time for the call, I wasn’t sure which settings to use while joining the call, so I just chose the default.
I said my usual morning greetings, then suddenly realised no one was able to hear me. I figured that using the default settings was probably not the right call. I couldn’t figure out how to change them to the desired settings so I quickly muted my mic and then turned off Bluetooth on my computer. I figured this would force Teams to pick the audio from my earphones instead.
I completely ignored the warning prompt that I wouldn’t be able to use my Bluetooth devices and continued to turn off Bluetooth.
At this point I had not realised that I’d lost connection to my Magic Mouse until I tried to unmute.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. I could hear everyone asking if I was there, while on the other end of the call, I was busy fighting to turn on my Bluetooth and reconnect my mouse.
I tried connecting the mouse to my Mac mini using a lightning cable, nothing happened.
I restarted the Mac mini by switching on and off the power button hoping, just like the iPhone, Bluetooth would turn on, nothing happened.
I was running out of time, I’d just received a text from my product owner asking if I was joining the call again.
I quickly pulled out my MacBook Pro (I’m not sure why I didn’t do this sooner) and tried to use universal control. It horribly failed to work, I’m not sure why, it could identify the MacBook Pro but it could only let me mirror my screen.
I finally started doing a bunch of googling, after one or two search results, I found a solution that worked.
I quickly jumped back on the teams call, narrated a tiny bit of my story and got a good laugh out of everyone 😂
The rest of the call went smoothly.
Conclusion
Experiences were probably birthed from such random decisions.
I should have simply left the call, rejoined with the right audio settings and saved myself the hassle.
Well, that was quite an experience, and It made me realize these newer devices are one switch away from being rendered useless.
I used to own a wireless mouse that came with a dongle but I weirdly broke it while switching the batteries. I guess it’s time to grab another one for this very reason.
Thanks for reading as always. Let me know if such a thing has ever happened to you and how you went about it.