AirBuddy is a sleek Mac app that helps you connect AirPods to your computer - The Verge

Apple’s AirPods are arguably the simplest and most seamless wireless earbuds on the market — at least for iPhone owners. That’s primarily because of the custom W1 chip that helps them communicate with iOS devices and establish near-instant Bluetooth connections. Yet the process for connecting AirPods to your Mac can be notably more annoying, often requiring a cumbersome amount of tinkering with the Bluetooth drop-down menu and sometimes even demanding that you turn Bluetooth off and on again to establish a link.

AirBuddy, a new app from 9to5Mac writer and developer Guilherme Rambo, aims to solve that problem by offering a clean and simple one-click interface for connecting your AirPods to your Mac. The software, available for as little as $5 (in a pay-what-you-want model), mirrors the pop-up window you’ll see on your iPhone when setting up the headphones and opening the case physically near your device, but it does so when you open the case near your Mac. From there, you can click to connect, and you’re good to go. AirBuddy also includes a widget for your Mac Notification Center that lets you monitor battery levels.

Now, there are a couple of other options that do essentially the same thing. The most popular one, and the one I’ve been using for months now, is ToothFairy, which costs just $3 and doubles as a way to control and toggle connections to all Bluetooth devices that are connected to your Mac. It doesn’t have the same neat interface mirroring you get with AirBuddy, but it does have a menu bar option that AirBuddy lacks in its current iteration. That said, AirBuddy’s Notification Center feature is a nice touch, and I can see the app being just as useful to AirPods owners as ToothFairy, especially if you don’t already own the latter app.

And Rambo, on Twitter earlier today, noted how he plans to build out AirBuddy with more features, including the ability to see other Bluetooth device connections. He says he also plans to open source the app at some point.

- Offering a manual way to show the status window when needed, besides the automatic heuristics-based approach that’s currently implemented
- Show battery for Watch and TV remote (I have no idea how to do this)
— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) January 28, 2019