Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

I ran into this same issue, my bluetooth earbuds would connect, then immediately disconnect.

Catalina 10.15.6

I was able to fix the problem by stopping the coreaudiod

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

I was then able to connect my bluetooth earbuds, which was then able to start the coreaudiod successfully

Update on this issue for me. On Catalina 10.15.6, MBP 2017 13", PowerBeats Pro. My issue is when I initially put my earbud in, I hear the chime of a disconnect. To workaround, I use Bluetooth Explorer > Tools > Test Bluetooth UI Panels > Pairing > Select my Powerbeats and click Pair. Then I hear to connect chime and it will work all day. I can take it off and set it on my desk, but if I put it back in the charging case, I have to repeat the process to re-connect.

I had this problem. There seems to be a compatability issue between the Sony receiver and my Macbook Pro. I had to force use of the basic SBC codec by disabling AAC in the Bluetooth Explorer Audio Options. Follow the instructions here, except disable rather than enable the different codecs. https://www.howtogeek.com/425605/how-to-force-macos-to-use-the-aptx-or-aac-codecs-for-bluetooth-headphones/

You may have noticed, but not only do you ge the horrible harsh squelch noise but it also slows down the music and messes it up completely—most noticable when streaming from Spotify on my Macbook Pro.

Big Sur has not solved this issue.

The only solution is to downgrade to Mojave until when/if Apple comes out with a fix which could be months or longer.

In the meantime I installed a command line tool that reconnects the bluetooth device within one second:

https://github.com/toy/blueutil

"blueutil --disconnect ID; blueutil --connect ID"

As has been said numerous times on this thread - NVRAM reset + bluetooth pref delete + blutooth debug + disconnecting/unpairing & every other trick here does NOT work. I repeat this is a bug in MacOS Catalina. None of the solutions in this thread will work. You can only downgrade to Mojave, and/or contact Apple who will takes months to fix this.

The terminal command is simply "sudo dmesg". It prints the messages in the kernel ring buffer. Because it's a ring buffer (i.e. overwrites itself over time) the messages only go back a short amount of time so you need to execute it shortly after the problem occurs (i.e. within 10-20 seconds)

Thanks. Malwarebytes didn't find anything and I'd be surprised if it did. Also this clearly seems to be Catalina issue as the problems started exactly with Mojave->Catalina upgrade. We need to wait for Apple to fix this and the more people nag them, the sooner it will happen.

Hi guys I've been having this issue too, I use only bluetooth audio devices and they keep connected sometimes but are not selectable as audio devices, after seeing in many sites I didn't find anything that helped me to fix the issue and I realized it may be not a bluetooth problem but an audio problem since in Mojave I had a similar issue, so what I did as a partial solution is to reset Audio device from the terminal using one of these commands:

Mojave

sudo killall coreaudiod

Catalina

sudo kill -9 168

I hope they work for you

--

Best regards

Guys, the only thing I found to avoid the awkward blasting speakers in inappropriate places is to turn internal speakers volume all the way down before connecting your Bluetooth audio device.

So when the bug happens, the original low/muted volume limits its awkwardness.

Hope they solve it soon