16-inch MacBook Pro Bluetooth issue

For what it's worth, after "fixing" the issue and having it rebreak on me, I brought my 16" MBP back in to Apple. The Genius Bar appeared to be familiar with this issue and immediately suggested a logic board replacement, which was completed in 3 days. Of course, it works perfectly now, but if it wasn't under warranty it would have been nearly $800! I threw out my CSR 4.0 dongle, just in case.

I can confirm that AntiHawk's solution worked for me. I had to order 3 different usb dongles. The cheap small half circle one didn't work at all. Second one was an expensive Vodafone acessorie type dongle, that one worked and fixed the issue. I am also waiting for a 3 dongle which is sitecom one, but looking at characteristics, it's exactly like the one from Vodafone. Point here, you definitely need to use a more expensive higher quality dongle.

I was trying to fix this issue for 2 weeks. Apple services were of no use as due to limited service at the moment they still didn't come back to me regarding what would be the best way to proceed. I went to Apple store and after all diagnostics the only solution was to swap motherboard, but there is at least two week delay on these jobs in the UK.

If anyone in the UK struggling to fix this issue and can't find the right dongle, let me know, I would be able to send it over.

Massive thanks to AntiHawk, legend!

Yes, same here! I used the same dongle and did the following:

-debug bluetooth

-delete bluetooth prefs

-reset SMC

-reboot

-reset NVRAM

-plug in this dongle:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00345SLGS/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

-Bluetooth logo changes to weird symbol

-unplug dongle

-plug dongle back in

-repeat until the weird symbol stays even when dongle is unplugged

-restart computer

-Mac MacBook made me force quit system prefs before letting me restart

-after restart bluetooth started working!

Hope this helps someone else, since apple wanted me to mail my MacBook in to replace logicboard

Alright, so no matter what I tried with all the bluetooth dongles I purchased, I couldn't get the bluetooth to come back. I had a feeling it was actually shot on the board. So, I sent my MacBook in. They replaced the logic board and Touch ID. I sent it in on Friday through a box from apple repair and got it back today (Tuesday). It really was only in repair for one day.

I set up the machine, logged in and my bluetooth is extremely laggy. Audio will lag for chunks of a time. It's sitting in the same exact spot it was in before it went for repair. They also wiped the drive and downgraded me to 10.15.7.

This all has to be a joke. This isn't even funny anymore.

I've just managed to fix this issue in a strange way, and without requiring any BT 2.0 dongle.

Background (don't know if it's mandatory for the fix):

I was affected by this problem for a couple of months, after reading the answers in this thread I've tried buying this dongle and tried AntiHawk's fix:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Small-Portable-Bluetooth-2-0-USB-Dongle-Adapter-For-Laptop-PC-Win-XP-Win-7-Win-8/353265753062?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

But it did not help (and my mac couldn't even use it to find any devices).

I've tried plugging in and out several times, but still didn't work.

I've then ran this command:

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior="never"

And kept it this way while trying to find a new dongle to purchase.

Several days later, I've tried the steps I mention below in this post (without even using the BT 2.0 dongle), and it magically started working.

I have no idea if the fact I've managed to fix this issue is related to the fact I've previously did plug the BT 2.0 dongle or not, but I'm posting my method here so others will try it too, with or without having previously using BT 2.0 dongle.

Would love to hear if this method worked for anyone else.

My steps were as follows:

• Open terminal and run these commands: (Let bluetoothd continue to run in the terminal window)

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior="always"
sudo nvram -p
bluetoothd

• Open the bluetooth menu and try connecting to a device.
• Everything works 🤯
• Closing the terminal window (terminating the running bluetoothd command).
• Running this command to prevent future problems:

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior="always"

• Everything still works.

Well... for me deleting the EFI partition and recreating the GUID partition table fixed the issue. It seems that this USB dongle is causing different problems on different Mac computers. Apple should address this issue and fix it ASAP.

I tried to port the kexts from Mojave to Catalina but the issue persisted (Bluetooth worked but with connection problems). Maybe it's something related with 32-bit compatibility on the driver itself.

I sent Apple some feedback with their Feedback Assistant app but as of today I got no response.

Now I downgraded back to Mojave and everything is working perfect... So I will stay here till Apple addresses the issue.

What is curious is that every Mac running Catalina shows (null) on all software versions (checked on a MacBook Air and another iMac both with no bluetooth issues). So for now the only option is wait for Apple to fix it.

felipejfc wrote:

holy sh*t, just want to confirm that after 2 months with no builtin bluetooth I managed to fix mine by doing @AntiHawk procedure using an old cheap bt 2.0 device.

I basically connected BT 2.0 device into my pc (and unplugged it, didn't connect to anything just let it search), opened terminal and deleted bluetooth plist, then reboot mac and cleaned nvram.

After this it started working again, I didn't even need to plug the usb bt again...

thanks @AntiHawk!

=== EDIT

I think that this basically shows that this is some really hard to debug software bug rather than short circuit into bt internal module like some said, it does make sense since bt and wifi use the same internal chip, so breaking one without breaking the other would be kinda crazy...

I think we just helped apple save couple hundred thousand U$D in replacement costs

That’s fantastic! Good to know that it’s working for you now.

What about features that depend on the built-in Bluetooth module such as Handoff, Unlock with Apple Watch, Sidecar, Instant Hotspot? Trying to confirm the Apple-specific firmware is unharmed.

Hi,

Just wanted to confirm that the procedure also working for me. After having tested several usb 2.0 dongles the one that worked for me was the Sitecom CN-521 pointed out by @koenbc. 

You will see very soon if your dongle is working or not because it has to be directly recognized by mac. If you see that when you connect your dongle your Bluetooth icon changes temporary to an error icon it won't work. Your dongle has to be able to search for devices.

In my case I was so tired of doing the complete procedure that this time I only did:

1) Connect the dongle.

2) Search for devices

3) Connect to Android Phone and cancel connection when the code appears on the mac.

4) Remove the dongle and try to connect immediately after with the internal Bluetooth

At this point you will see a loading rainbow icon as if you were broking what's already broke -> Good sign.

5) Reboot computer 

6) Your expensive MacBook will be available to do something amazing in 2020: has internal Bluetooth.

Thank you Apple for being revolutionary, for questioning the things that we take for granted like connecting an external Bluetooth to our expensive devices and make us loose our Bluetooth for 4 months.

Also, the customer service experience is a joke... I understand that we've been in difficult times but your 1-week visibility for reserve a genius bar... You market yourself as the brand for creators, entrepreneurs... And then you think that we don't have anything better to do than connecting us to the website / call you everyday to check if there is availability in your stores... Never experienced any situation like this with $700 Toshiba laptops... 

Anyways, thanks @AntiHawk for this fix and all the community support.

Good luck to those of us who haven't still been able to fix their Bluetooth.

I sent it back to Apple they couldn’t fix it. They asked me if I needed a replacement, because that was the only solution that could resolve the Bluetooth issue. I advice if your internal Bluetooth module functions as expected, do not plug any external Bluetooth dongle or adapter into your 16inch MacBook Pro. It can be very frustrating if you come across issues with resolving the Bluetooth issue.

Posting on this forum won’t get Apple engineers attention as I think this is only meant for users helping each other. By the activity in this thread we can say that this is at least a common issue. But we cannot be sure this is reproducible on all laptops of these model ranges. So I think it would really help if people having this issue contact Apple support: https://getsupport.apple.com and clearly explain how this issue appeared after an external Bluetooth receiver was connected.

I did that and by their instructions I collected some diagnostics data their engineers can examine. The more people to that, the more information they’ll have to diagnose the bug. It will become clearer to them how many people are affected.

Also don’t forget their support employees probably mostly get questions such as people who don’t know how to pair their mouse and it might be rare they actually come across real hardware or software bugs. Or if it’s a hardware problem it’s usually the one laptop that needs to be fixed with a replacement part and not a design flaw in all laptops of the model. That’s probably really rare. So having some patience, clearly explain how this issue appeared and let them go through their procedures to eliminate other causes is good. I found the advisors I chatted with or spoke by phone very professional and helpful.

Anyway, my support case is escalated and they will contact me later this week. I really hope this can be solved in a software update.

Hi guys,

I was having the same issue, described in this thread. Fortunately, being very impatient (waiting for the dongle to arrive), I read up on nvram executable, it seems there is a way to list all variables using 'nvram -p' command. I noticed that BluetoothInternalController description was referencing my external dongle. For the next step I issued a command to delete all firmware variables and restart the Mac with following commands (remove external dongles before performing this):

• sudo nvram -c
• sudo reboot

I know that some of you might say that it's something that I should not have not done, but it seems to me that after restart, all firmware variables were regenerated anyways (and BluetoothInternalController has a correct value. Now my internal Bluetooth is discovering devices and working as expected, without any dongle manipulation!

To be honest, It's hard to say. I've managed to break/fix my bluetooth about 10-15 times, but it looks like that this issue appears to be sporatic and the 'fix' that I've posted above should work, but it might take couple of tries. Steps that worked 100% of time are as follows (after 5 - 10 minutes of performing them):

Step 1:

Start off by removing all dongles, clearing nvram and reboot:

sudo nvram -c 
sudo reboot

Step 2:

After Macbook reboots, login to your account and open bluetooth settings window. You should have indication that a scan is in progress. More than likely you will see no devices. Open terminal and kill bluetooth daemon (it will restart automatically after you run kill command):

ps -ef | grep /usr/sbin/bluetoothd | awk -F' ' '{print $2}' | sudo xargs kill -9 2> /dev/null

Step 3:

Go back to the bluetooth settings window, and press 'Back' followed 'Forward' buttons to restart the bluetooth scan. If nothing is found, plugin bluetooth dongle (preferably any BT2.0, but I suspect it would work with the dongle that 'bricked' your Macbook). You will see that the devices are found, now unplug it again and repeat the scan by pressing back/forward buttons. Keep repeating Steps 2 and 3, until internal bluetooth starts working...

Note that if your internal bluetooth device does not start working after 5 minutes or even external bluetooth device stop working, restart your macbook and keep repeating Steps 2 and 3...

Again, based on my observation, this issue fixes itself eventually with these steps, but you have to 'confuse' bluetooth daemon until that happens..

Hi

Just set the dongle switching behaviour to "never", then pluging in the adapter will not crash your internal bluetooth again. (default is 'always' - meaning, the OS will always try to use the plugged in dongle).

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=never

BR

Boris

Yeah, you're gonna have to send in your laptop to Apple to replace the logic board. That's what they did for me.