LinkFlick

LinkFlick is a macOS menu bar app that switches your Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad between any Macs on your local network. Its purpose is simple: hand off Apple's Magic peripherals from one Mac to another in a single gesture, with no cables, no dongles, no iCloud, and no re-pairing. You install LinkFlick on each Mac you want to move devices between, and it waits quietly in the menu bar until you need it. The app is built for people who work across more than one Mac — a laptop and a desktop, a personal machine and a work machine — and who want their keyboard, mouse, and trackpad to follow them to whichever screen they are working on rather than staying stuck on the Mac that last claimed them. The problem LinkFlick addresses is the friction of shared Apple peripherals. Magic devices can only talk to one Mac at a time, so anyone moving between machines has to go through the Bluetooth pairing process again and again: unpair here, discover there, confirm, and repeat on the way back. The launch notes describe exactly this frustration — re-pairing a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse every time the maker moved between a personal MacBook and a work MacBook. Because those two machines used different Apple IDs, Universal Control was never going to be an option. LinkFlick takes a different route: it works at the Bluetooth and local network level instead of depending on Apple's ecosystem features, so it does not care which Apple ID is signed in, whether the Macs belong to the same person, or how the two machines are configured. The goal is to remove the digging through menus that makes peripheral sharing painful. Switching is deliberately minimal. LinkFlick lives in your menu bar and presents your Macs as a cluster of trusted peers that are instantly available for a switch. A single click — or a customizable hotkey, or a spoken command to Siri to flick devices — moves the keyboard, mouse, and trackpad to the other Mac in one gesture. There are no cables and no dongles involved; it is a hand-off of your controls between machines. Because the control is explicit and lives in the menu bar rather than following the cursor across screens, you do not have to worry about your pointer drifting off the edge of the screen by accident. As the site puts it, everything is there and you simply continue exactly where you left off. LinkFlick's key technical idea is that it moves the physical hardware, not just the cursor. Instead of bridging an input stream across the network, it re-pairs the peripherals at the Bluetooth layer, so the destination Mac sees a real Magic device — a genuine Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, or Magic Trackpad — rather than a forwarded or emulated input signal. The site describes this as native by design, with no iCloud dependency, no network relays, and no limits. LinkFlick supports 1st and 2nd generation Magic hardware, covering keyboard, mouse, and trackpad. The app intentionally supports Apple's Magic peripherals only, and the FAQ explains why: these devices enter Bluetooth discovery mode automatically after unpairing, which allows LinkFlick to perform a silent re-pair on the other Mac without PIN codes or confirmation dialogs. The site explicitly notes that third-party devices from Logitech, Razer, and similar brands are not currently supported. Because LinkFlick operates at the Bluetooth and local network level, it has no dependency on iCloud or Apple ID. You can move a Magic Mouse between a personal MacBook and a work Mac Studio signed into different accounts without any configuration. Macs are discovered automatically: LinkFlick uses Bonjour to find your Macs on the local subnet, with no cloud servers involved, and both Wi-Fi and Ethernet work as long as all Macs are on the same network. The app also keeps an eye on your peripherals. It displays battery levels, and the launch post notes that it nags you before your Magic Mouse battery dies. Alongside that, LinkFlick senses power and display status: the moment you connect power or a display, it wakes up, checks where your devices need to be, and offers a gentle nudge that your Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad are still on another Mac. Putting it together, LinkFlick forms a cluster of trusted Macs. You install the app on every Mac you want to transfer devices between; it runs as a lightweight menu bar extra that uses almost no resources when idle. When you switch, the app hands off each device silently in the background — no pairing screens, no interruption — typically in 5 to 15 seconds, depending on how quickly macOS processes the Bluetooth pairing request internally. Before any of that, it needs two permissions: Bluetooth access to re-pair devices, and Local Network access to discover other Macs via Bonjour. It does not require administrator privileges, does not read keyboard input, and keeps all communication within your home or office network — nothing is sent to the cloud. If the destination Mac is off or asleep, your devices simply stay connected to the current Mac, and the other machine reappears in the Flick List as soon as it wakes and LinkFlick reconnects. The outcome is continuity. Your workflow follows you between machines: you open your editor on the other Mac, pick up your mouse, and carry on right where you left off, without touching a Bluetooth settings pane. Devices arrive waiting rather than requiring you to go find them. Switching happens in the background while you are already turning to face the other screen, and if a transfer cannot happen because the target Mac is unavailable, nothing breaks — your devices stay where they are and the opportunity to move them returns on its own. With no cloud, no account, and no admin rights required, the setup is also private and lightweight by construction: your input devices and your data never leave the local network that your Macs already share. Concrete scenarios are easy to picture. A developer plugs their MacBook into a desk setup with an external display; the moment power and display connect, LinkFlick notices and offers to bring the Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad back from the desktop Mac. Someone who splits their day between a personal MacBook and a work Mac with a different Apple ID uses a hotkey or a Siri command to flick devices over and back as meetings and tasks demand. A home user with a laptop and a desktop moves their Magic Mouse and Keyboard between the two without re-pairing either time. Power users with a full multi-Mac setup — up to five Macs on the Pro plan — keep one set of peripherals useful across every machine on the same network. LinkFlick is aimed at Mac users who own more than one Mac and at least one Magic peripheral: people working across laptop and desktop, individuals bridging personal and work machines, and power users running a full multi-Mac arrangement. The app requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and all Macs must be on the same local network. Pricing is a one-time purchase with no subscriptions: the Personal plan costs $14.99 and covers up to 3 Macs, described as perfect for working between a laptop and a desktop at home, while the Pro plan costs $19.99 and covers up to 5 Macs for power users and full multi-Mac setups. Both plans include auto device discovery, instant switching, battery level display, trusted peers, free updates, and no cloud or account requirement. A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card required; on the trial you can connect up to 3 Macs — your local Mac plus 2 trusted peers. LinkFlick's core value proposition is straightforward: stop re-pairing your Magic Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad every time you change Macs. By moving devices at the Bluetooth layer, discovering Macs over Bonjour on the local network, and keeping the whole experience inside a menu bar app with a hotkey or a Siri command, it turns a tedious pairing ritual into a one-click hand-off — no iCloud, no Apple ID dependency, no cloud servers, and no admin privileges, just your Magic devices following you between the Macs you already trust.