Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

While I agree with your basic sentiment, the point of sharing our frustrating experience is to generate as much traffic/views/replies/attention to this issue as possible. Unless you are content with this bug being permanent, we have to ring the bell until Apple wakes the f*** up.

I'm a little concerned about the randomness of this issue. It happens on all kinds of models (Air,Mid2012 in my case) with all kinds of headphones/speakers; even on fresh installs. But still only a few people seem to have problems. Maybe too few for Apple to care...

Ha. yesterday day I installed 10.15.3. too and hoped the issue is fixed as u said.but just now it happend again.

did u changed anything else except updating to 10.15.3?

so sad that apple didnt get this issue solved.

I now believe my problem literally moved out, probably a student with a machine done with his/her exams. Competition for devices or interference with 2,4 Ghz wifi to be short.

I haven’t done anything but restarts since the problem occured last time. I haven’t changed devices. All is the same. Catalina with Music is better than Mojave with iTunes. But I miss some games. Then, it’s better to have a PC, anyway.

I cannot just blame Apple.

I can easily reproduce the issue. As soon as system needs additional memory it kills idle processes and it thinks for some reason (some bug in the code) that "bluetoothaudiod" is idle and kills it.

You can open application "console" and search for two words: "killing_idle_process" and "bluetoothaudiod" and you should find the same.

I will request support from Apple.

Same problem. I use a Logitech bluetooth (BT) adapter to connect to external speakers. When Catalina mysteriously switches to the internal speakers, and I go to sound preferences and click on the bluetooth audio device, which is still showing as connected, nothing happens. I think at that point the bluetooth audio device may not, in fact, be connected -- not sure.

But! Here's an interesting twist. If at that point I click on "Disconnect" for the bluetooth device, the device gives a signal indicating that Catalina just reconnected to it. Then I can go to sound preferences and switch the audio back to the bluetooth audio device. (For now.)

But I shouldn't have to do any of that, of course. What a hot mess.

Like everyone here I have the same problem and have it every workday.

I have conference calls for which I either use the Plantronics V5200 headset or the sennheiser SP 30 bluetooth speaker.

If I use them with the MacBook the connection switches to internal speakers every 10 to 20 minutes, and switches back automatically a minute or so later. Extremely annoying to have this every call.

When I use the same devices with my iPad Pro I don't have the issue at all.

So for me it is pretty clear it is an issue with the MacBook.

Another issue with Microsoft Teams is that it is loosing its permissions to share the screen. Then you have to start stop a few times to be able to start your screen again.

I worked for several decades with Microsoft operating systems and never had any issues with video conferences.

I work for almost a year with a Mac, which is so called more stable and robust and I have seen more issues and missing functionalities in a year than in the decades with Microsoft operating systems.

So when will the so called reliable Apple introduce video conferencing with audio and screen sharing?

Next key note in September 2020 or could that be a bit earlier???

You must not misinform. Not everyone has this problem anymore. But it’s not clear how in my case. I still get the same error message, but I get an option to go internal speakers when I am disconnected.

I depends on amount of free memory you have. That in the same time depends on your installed memory in Mac/Macbook and also how much applications / tabs in chrome you open. With 8 GB memory for me it happens rarely now, but I try not to open much applications or restart chrome often (to free all memory that chrome has taken by the moment).

It isn’t that simple, but I like the idea partially. Because I haven’t change the memory usage. Only XProtectPlistConfigData and MRTConfigData were installed when the problem disappeared, btw. It doesn’t matter, I guess.

Ok. I have now experienced the problem three times the last 24 hours, but these were exclusively linked to playing a music video in Music, which has worked perfectly for several weeks. This happened after the bluetooth unit was entirely unpaired due to «too low sound» and was reconnected - a common procedure in other words - to obtain louder sound. The sound related to the music video afterwards was directed to the internal speakers, but after the video finished and went over to a normal music file in the playlist, the sound came back to the external speakers and played the next songs. In the time between, the external speakers did not appear in Music. If I interrupted the dropout with disconnection and a restart, both Music and the «system control» appeared «not responding» in Activity Monitor. I got the usual error messages afterwards.

I looked at the memory usage. I have something called «buffer» memory, which is very likely the same as cached memory in English (just translated). I had used 6 GB of memory at that time. The cached memory was at 1,89 GB or lower. I have 8 GB RAM. The video requires full screen. Usually, I hit Escape. But now I have replaced the file.

Music is an odd app. I don’t know why it behaves like this. Sometimes, the volume bar in Music is adjusted down. Sometimes, the video doesn’t play at all. This did also happen one of the three times, even after a restart. Sometimes, I have to restart Music to add new songs from Apple Music or to get connection.

Ok. I have now experienced the problem three times the last 24 hours, but these were exclusively linked to playing a music video in Music, which has worked perfectly for several weeks. This happened after the bluetooth unit was entirely unpaired due to «too low sound» and was reconnected - a common procedure in other words - to obtain louder sound. The sound related to the music video afterwards was directed to the internal speakers, but after the video finished and went over to a normal music file in the playlist, the sound came back to the external speakers and played the next songs. In the time between, the external speakers did not appear in Music. If I interrupted the dropout with disconnection and a restart, both Music and the «system control» appeared «not responding» in Activity Monitor. I got the usual error messages afterwards.

I looked at the memory usage. I have something called «buffer» memory, which is very likely the same as cached memory in English (just translated). I had used 6 GB of memory at that time. The cached memory was at 1,89 GB or lower. I have 8 GB RAM. The video requires full screen. Usually, I hit cmd+tab. But now I have replaced the file.

Music is an odd app. I don’t know why it behaves like this. Sometimes, the volume bar in Music is adjusted down. Sometimes, the video doesn’t play at all. This did also happen one of the three times, even after a restart. Sometimes, I have to restart Music to add new songs from Apple Music or to get connection.

For me, I had been using Sennheiser HD 4.0 BT Headphones with my Macbook Pro, which was recently upgraded to Catalina.

It was working fine earlier (before upgrade). But after upgrade, everytime I connected this headphone via Bluetooth, it would disconnect within few seconds. Deleting the device and repairing didn't help

However I followed the instructions on https://www.catalinaosx.com/bluetooth-not-working-catalina-os/ . I did both deleting the plist file as well as resetting the NVRAM (Cmd+Option+P+R on reboot) and re-paired it. Now it has been 10-15 mins and it hasn't disconnected yet.

Hi everybody. Just to add my (negative) experience since I upgraded to Catalina with regards to bluetooth issues.

I usually work with a first series magic keyboard and mouse connected to a 2017 15 MacBook Pro. Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones are connected via bluetooth too.

Never had a problem, but after upgrading I'm experiencing a lot of - apparently random - disconnections. Sometimes MacBook hangs and after a while (a minute maybe...) every device disconnects and reconnects again (twice while I'm writing these few rows...).

One word also for iPhone: after upgrading to 11 Pro Max - iOS 13 couple I have problem with car syncing via bluetooth (connection succeds, but cars' hardware (tried Skoda, Renault, Audi...) seems to be unable to sync contacts and calls (to be honest it once happened... while I was driving I suddenly saw the "Contacts synchronised ... " or whatever ... on the car's infotainment monitor, but since then I was never able to sync again).

It's more a personal outburst rather than an help's request. My first iPhone was a 3GS and my first Mac was the white laptop: since then it seems to me that things are getting worse, specially when it comes to customer care. :-(

Hoping that next releases will do the magic and everything will work again as expected (and as paid ...).

Meanwhile wish you all a nice day.

Giampaolo

Same problem here. Catalina is utter garbage. It's finally making me consider leaving the Mac ecosystem entierly. Completely unacceptable that basic functionality like bluetooth and wifi stop functioning propperly. Even in the event that there were bugs, you would expect apple to patch it immediately. Not acceptable. Not sure whether to downgrade or wait (for how long?) for a patch.

The ideas from this site were the first ones I tried to fix this issue, but alas it didn’t work.

It has been months now since I “upgraded” to Catalina without being able to use Bluetooth. I’ve called support multiple times with no fix.