Pairing Your Apple Remote
If you have 2-3 Macs with Apple Remotes in your house, then this is a great tip for you. When you go to start up Front Row you might be turning it on for all the Macs that are close by. This can get to be pretty annoying for anyone who’s trying to get some work done or playing a game.
Fortunately Apple allows you to pair Apple Remotes to computers. Much like how you pair that bluetooth Mighty Mouse or keyboard to your Mac. This way the remote will only work with one Mac instead of them all!
Apple’s documentation on the process is very simple (only 3 steps):
1. First you need to be about 3 or 4 inches from your Mac.
2. Point the remote at your Mac and hold the Menu Next/Fast Forward buttons.
3. Do that for about 5 seconds and you should see an image of the Apple Remote with a link icon appear on the screen. Once that happens, that remote is paired with that Mac.
To be 100% sure the pairing took place you can open up System Preferences and click the Security button. In the window at the bottom you should see a button that says ‘Unpair.’ That means the remote is paired and you can unpair it by simply clicking on that button.
You can also test it by hitting the Menu button in-front of other Macs and if it worked nothing will happen!
Something I discovered while doing this is that only administrator accounts can pair remotes to computers. Standard accounts will not work.
Now I can work on my Keynote presentations and watch movies in Front Row without disturbing any other Macs or the people using them!