What Is Thunderbolt Bridge? Explained

Aug. 10, 2024

Do you see the Thunderbolt Bridge feature on your Mac but have no idea what it is and how it works? Well, you’ve landed at the right place. If you use Thunderbolt devices on your Mac for data transfer or other purposes, you’ll encounter a feature called Thunderbolt Bridge that provides a high-speed peer-to-peer network connection. This article will explain to you what is Thunderbolt Bridge, how it works, what are its advantages, and how you can set up and use Thunderbolt Bridge on a Mac. So, without any ado, let’s get started!

Thunderbolt Bridge on Mac & Its Advantages

With themacOS versionMavericks OS X, Apple introduced the Thunderbolt Bridge feature that allows high-speed data transfer between two machines using a Thunderbolt port. It provides a peer-to-peer connection and the file transfer via a Thunderbolt interface is much faster, compared to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. To use Thunderbolt Bridge, you’ll have to connect two Macs via a Thunderbolt cable and the system will then create an extremely fast and direct data link between the two machines. This feature works with various apps and features on Mac, including File Sharing, Internet Sharing, Target Disk Mode, Migration Assistant, and more.

You can use Thunderbolt Bridge to do the following:

It’s easy to connect two Macs using Thunderbolt Bridge. If you’re connecting your Mac to a Thunderbolt device for the first time, you have to activate Thunderbolt Bridge in System Settings. Here’s how to do it:

Once you’ve set up Thunderbolt Bridge, you can seamlessly transfer files between your Macs. Here’s how to do it:

With this, you can access all the files and features on the other Mac, including the keyboard, display, and mouse.

If you wish to remove the Thunderbolt Bridge from the available network interfaces on your Mac, you can do it with the following steps:

This will delete the Thunderbolt Bridge on your Mac and disables the connection. Since the action can’t be undone, you must be cautious. If you ever want to use Thunderbolt Bridge again on your Mac, you’ll have to create a new Thunderbolt Bridge connection.