Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

Thanks for sharing the info @appleadventure,

How's it going with 10.15.3, did you get the issue ever-since?

IDK if you have any info about that but do you know when should we expect that update? (as non-beta)

Thanks

What I found regarding this problem is that it's fully related to memory. When memory pressure indicator changes to orange (memory is almost full), then BT headphones loose ability to play sound. I didn't try 10.15.3 version (currently 10.15.2 and the problem is still here), but I will try to update as soon as it available (not available version for my macbook yet).

Thank you for sharing your finding but it's hard to believe that it's the root cause. If lack of memory affect BT audio would mean that you system is at the point of the ********* performance ever. This is a bug not related to performance. And is a really sad one since BT audio is got **** a basic end user feature these days. And believe me, not a complex one technically, unless Apple doesn't has the knowledge?

It seems to happen for me when I’m editing phones or video. Which is you know... The only thing I do on my iMac!

Ive been tweeting them every week for two months and no response.

This is absolute bullshit.

jmattdb not the *********, but under some load (I have 8 GB memory), for example 3 Chrome windows with 20 tabs each, Slack, Skype, VSCode and during a call in Skype with ScreenSharing, memory can go out of green state and immediately BT sound disconnects. I think OS just unloads BT sound module because it's sitting somewhere in the cache or something like that. Btw, when memory pressure go out from green (there are some levels), it doesn't mean that machine will be very slow yet.

During about last 3 months I had it like 20+ times and after like 10th I started to notice that memory is related to that and it happens everytime. After that I moved some apps out from my macbook to remote Mac and now connecting remotely there, but anyway sometimes I overload memory even now.

Using 10.15.3 beta here for a few days and the issue still occurs consistently, every couple of minutes, sometimes seconds (Bose Soundlink headphone). Tried bluetooth resets and NVRAM resets also.

Turning headphones off and on again connects automatically. And than disconnects...

I'm starting to get used to this bug, which annoys me at least a dozen times a day...

The next OS update won't fix it, which means it'll be at least a couple of months until there is a fix.

What can we do to let apple know?

How come only a few users are affected (even after a clean install)?

It is ridiculous that this bug hasn't been addressed or fixed it.

Luckily I was able to dig up an old wired headset/mic so I can continue using my Mac for Google Meet and GTM. Not ideal, but I've basically have accepted that using Bluetooth is no longer an option.

Upgrading to Mojave was a huge mistake...

You should seriously consider this on your next upgrade :). You paid $$$$ to get this ".. status quo.." of MacBook not supporting BT audio. Or even worse, Apple not being accountable with their customers by doing nothing.

I opened Finder, selected “Go” and the “Go to Folder...” and typed in “~/Library/Caches”. Then I deleted everything in there and watched my RAM increase substantially. I’ve been watching it carefully and clearing the RAM down periodically to see if it is a RAM issue. So far, the Bluetooth has stayed connected for over two hours (where it was doing it every minute or so when available RAM was running around 32MB on my MacBook Air with 4GB RAM).

I’m going to try this for the next couple of days to see if this works. I know that this started when I upgraded to Catalina but they may be using the RAM a different way in this version?

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Happened again and again memory pressure at yellow level. System in the same time is quite well usable. In system log I can see I think only these rows related to the problem:

Jan 10 10:49:24 MacBook-Andrej com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bluetoothaudiod): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 1 seconds.

Jan 10 10:49:30 --- last message repeated 4 times ---

And what I actually did is just watching a movie in Chrome browser with fullscreen mode.

That was my fix. There were 2 issues with Catalina that bothered me, one was this BlueTooth bug, the other was that some older software that runs fine on Mojave don't work on Catalina. Moving back to Mojave solved both problems for me. I won't be trying Catalina again anytime soon.

I haven’t experienced any bluetooth audio problems with Catalina in four weeks. Haven’t updated or changed anything in over a month. I haven’t done anything that worked. It’s tampering with my mind. Is there a bug? Will it return tomorrow already? I am not joking, although it’s tempting. It dropped out as often as two times a minute.

I am on 10.15.2 and this is still happening and if anything worse (i.e., happening more frequently). Bose QC35 II

One observation: Happens more at work, where there are more bluetooth devices of other folks in close proximity I'd assume. Interference?

A theory: somehow related to wifi roaming (I understand bluetooth and wifi may be on the same physical card under the hood). That said, still happens when I turn wifi off and use a cabled connection.

Hi guys. Did this discussion space ever had any attention or feedback from an Apple representative?

We are basically alone here. There's no point of keeping sharing our frustrating customer experience here.

The only thing I realized watching this discussion is that I would be s.tupid as s.hit if I go with Apple on my next buy.