I am running a MacBook Air M2 with an external monitors and an bluetooth Apple keyboard (1st gen) and trackpad (2nd gen).
I typically run the MacBook closed. When I do this, I detect a strange bug.
When typing on my keyboard I notice that the key presses are sometimes recorded twice and then corrected. For example, while typing this sentence some characters briefly appear twice before the double entry is corrected and disappears. If that sounds bizarre to you, then please just know I’m very certain now that this is what is happening. I’ve tried to replicate the problem in various ways, such as with the MacBook open, and with the docking station unlinked. However, I’ve discovered that this strange bug only happens when the docking station is connected and the MacBook is closed.
Does anyone have any issue like this? Any suggestions?
Thank you for contacting Plugable! I’m sorry the keyboard isn’t working as expected when connecting to the UD-ULTCDL with your laptop’s lid closed, and I’ll be happy to assist.
A wireless keyboard or mouse behaving erratically (e.g. delayed input, duplicated keystrokes) can occur due to Radio Frequency (RF) interference between the 2.4GHz frequency band used by wireless USB/Bluetooth peripherals and the USB 3 connection of the dock. In short, the USB 3 traffic used by the dock may cause interference in the wireless signal and cause similar issues to the ones described in your post. We have a Knowledge Base article that speaks to this in more detail if you are interested: https://kb.plugable.com/question/706568
With that said, it’s unusual for this type of problem to only occur when the laptop’s lid is closed. Typically if this type of problem is caused by RF interference I’d expect it to occur regardless of if the lid is open or closed.
Are you repositioning the MacBook to be closer to the UD-ULTCDL when the lid is closed? If the laptop is being repositioned to a position closer to the dock when it’s closed then it may be placing its internal Bluetooth antenna closer to a source of interference and triggering the issue.
A general troubleshooting step to reduce the amount of interference in a setup is to move the 2.4GHz signal source (in this case the laptop’s internal bluetooth antenna/the keyboard/trackpad) further away from active USB 3 connections. With USB dongles this is much simpler since you can use an extension cable for the dongle, but with internal Bluetooth adapters it’s a bit more challenging to separate the antenna from the USB 3 connection. Moving the dock further away from the laptop/keyboard/trackpad may be worth attempting to see if it helps to improve the behavior.
My apologies for the frustration, and thank you for giving us the chance to help!