Losing window focus every 5 minutes. Narrowed it down to BluetoothUIServer

Question

Level 1

14 points

Losing window focus every 5 minutes. Narrowed it down to BluetoothUIServer

This has been happening since before Monterrey, but only recently started trying to figure the issue out:

Whenever I have my macbook's bluetooth turned on, no mater what window I have active it will without fail lose focus every 5 minutes on the dot.

Using https://github.com/XQuartz/xquartz-old-tickets/blob/master/attachment/ticket/58/watch_activations.py I narrowed it down to com.apple.BluetoothUIServer located at /System/Library/CoreServices/BluetoothUIServer.app. That process is stealing focus, but I don't see its window. It's not visible when cmd+tabbing, etc.

In activity monitor I can see that it is my user that runs it and if I terminate the process, it will reappear exactly on schedule every time.

The only way I can stop this from happening is disabling bluetooth from system preferences. I'm thinking of reinstalling the OS, but not sure how much good that'll do and want to avoid it if there's anything else I can try before.

Some screenshots:

Posted on Nov 17, 2021 6:26 PM

Reply

Answer 1

rhyek Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 30, 2021 7:55 AM in response to rhyek

So I tried doing a clean install of MacOS including erasing all user data and it's been working fine for the past few days without the issue. It's now come back and realized it started happening when I connected my MBP to my iPad Pro via bluetooth for sidecar.

I tried disabling handoff and just leaving the pairing on (not connected as I think you can't connect to an iPad this way) and the issue persists. It is only resolved when I unpair the iPad from within MacOS.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 7, 2022 12:05 PM in response to rhyek

I am having the same issue on my iMac (just updated to Monterey) -- my MBP (also on Monterey) does not have the issue. I have done the following:

Removed all bluetooth devices
Turned off bluetooth
remove the bluetooth plist
Reboot -- clearing NVRAM
Turn on bluetooth

Still happening -- Interestingly -- my MBP does not have BluetoothUIServer running -- and it is connected to a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. The same setup with iMac -- only mouse and keyboard and BluetoothUIServer is running on the iMac (not on MBP).

I have validated that it is BluetoothUIServer that is stealing focus, but there is no way to get rid of it short of turning off bluetooth (makes it hard to use the keyboard/mouse ;))

There is clearly some bug out there that needs to be addressed.

Reply