xStagGx

Q: Airdrop and automatic personal hotspot don't work

Since some time I'm having problems with two utilities - airdrop, and personal hotspot. I hope you'll be able to help me!

 

1. Airdrop

Airdrop has stopped working completely. Neither macbook or iPhone cannot find each other. (I've waited several times about 30 mins)

I've made some research and tried the following to solve this problem; Without desired results:

- signing in and out of the iCloud account

- toggling iCloud drive

- setting discovery to contacts only as well as everyone

- rebooting devices, including router

- resetting NVRAM

 

The funniest thing? My mac probably connects to iPhone when choosing "share" option on one of these devices, because as soon as I choose share, bluetooth icon on mac changes into "3 doted B" which indicates that other device has connected to it (on my iPhone at the same time bluetooth icon becomes bold, which also means that it has connected to other BT device).

 

2. Personal hotspot

My landline local internet connection is pretty slow (10Mbps), so since I have unlimited LTE plan I often use my iPhone as personal hotspot for my mac. Always the process was quick and convenient - all I had to do is to press the wifi icon on the status bar, and choose my iPhone from the list - then, the connection was established.

Currently, my iPhone is no longer discovered, so I have to go on my iPhone to settings -> cellular -> personal hotspot and there toggle it. Then, on the mac press the wifi icon and choose my iPhone.

 

- Both devices are nearby each other

- I have tried to unlock iPhone prior looking for hotspot as well as trying to do so with wifi toggled on and off on my iPhone, with same result.

 

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm too lazy and don't want to toggle manually personal hotspot each and every time, but if something is desired to work that way, it should work that way; And if it doesn't - that means there is problem. And if there is problem - it should be solved

 

 

-------------------------- I think this may be helpful information -----------------

Yesterday I've had pretty nasty system failure. Macbook was stuck on apple logo with loading progress at 50%. Also in recovery mode (cmd+r) the wifi didn't work - it took about minute to discover networks nearby, but attempt to connect to any of these ended with an error message (something like unable to connect to network xxx, try getting closer to the router). Even connection to personal hotspot from iPhone failed. I've had to boot into internet recovery mode to establish wifi connection and then I was able to restore my mac using time machine backup. However even restoration haven't solved these problems. (I restored to state from beginning of July to ensure that any putative corrupted files which > could < cause these problems are no longer present).

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Hardware and software

1. Retina Macbook Pro mid 2014. OS X Yosemite 10.10.4

2. iPhone 6 plus. iOS 9, 2nd seed public beta

3. 2tb Airport Time Capsule (current generation), firmware 7.7.3 (I've tried both 5Ghz and 2.5Ghz connections).

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jul 29, 2015 3:33 PM

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Q: Airdrop and automatic personal hotspot don't work

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  • by lucasvallim,

    lucasvallim lucasvallim Sep 22, 2016 2:11 PM in response to xStagGx
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 22, 2016 2:11 PM in response to xStagGx

    On your Mac:

     

    1. Turn bluetooth off

    2. Finder -> Go to Folder... -> /Library/Preferences/

    3. Delete the file com.apple.Bluetooth.plist

    4. Turn bluetooth on

     

    If the above procedure doesn't work, try turning Airdrop Off and On (on your iPhone).

     

    This should solve it!