I’ve been working on upgrading my desk setup and I’ll be doing a story on that shortly. But in the meantime, I’ve been looking for a way to better use the Apple Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad that I’ve recently acquired. The main issue that I’ve had is that one or the other would move. Thus I couldn’t use muscle memory to control and type on my Mac. Thus figuring that I wasn’t the only person with this issue, I did some hunting around and came across the Twelve South Magic Bridge Extended.
The MagicBridge Extended is a plastic tray that fits the MagicKeyboard that I have along with the Magic Trackpad. The grey section is where the keyboard goes if you’re right handed. Or you can move it to the left to set it up the other way around.
The bottom has holes that allow you to push out the keyboard and trackpad should you need to.
This is the end result with the keyboard on the left, and my Snapping everything in is simple because TwelveSouth put out this video that shows you how to set things up:
I had no issues setting things up after I watched this video and it only took a couple of minutes.
The back of the MagicBridge Extended has holes that not only allow Bluetooth signals through, but also give you access to the on/off switch as well as the Lightning port for charging.
So I have used this setup for a couple of days. And once I found a position where I could type and use the Magic Trackpad without it feeling weird, I found that it worked quite well. By “weird” I mean that you have centre the keyboard part of this setup so that typing feels normal. That puts the trackpad out to the right in my case as I am right handed. I can see how that might be an issue for some. And for those who have a bit of OCD about centring everything on your desk, that might be a bit of an issue too. Since the keyboard and trackpad are one piece, I can use it on my lap if I so choose. It also allows me to move the keyboard and trackpad out of the way quickly if I need the surface of the desk for something else. But the main goal was to keep the keyboard and the trackpad in a consistent place where muscle memory would allow me to be productive as nothing was moving about. And it succeeds on that front. Overall, I like the setup.
The MagicBridge Extended is $50 USD directly from Twelve South. But if you have the Magic Keyboard without the number pad, they have a version for that use case as well which is simply called the MagicBridge. If you own a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad and you want to make them even more useful, The MagicBridge Extended or MagicBridge is absolutely worth looking at.