Universal Control has been broken too long

Quick update on this. Couldn't get UC to hold connection. Tried everything support suggested. Eventually gave up and bought Synergy. Which...was holding fine BUT periodically lagging/jerky on the client machine, at the same interval as I was getting disconnections on UC. Found a forum post from Synergy users complaining of lag and they recommended disabling handoff on both devices. Done that and it's been smooth as butter for over an hour now. So there's definitely something here to do with iCloud/Handoff.

It could be iCloud but to me it looks like wifi.

In my logs, surrounding a universalcontrol failure, the logs are also spitting out Bluetooth and wifi errors galore but the iCloud pairing processes seem to be working ok.

Which checks out because the Bluetooth/wifi performance on my machine is awful.

imoebis wrote:

There are endless threads here and on reddit about Universal Control just disconnecting randomly and none of the updates over the last 2 years has fixed it.

The common answer given when folks exhaust all of the troubleshooting guides is that it's bluetooth interference. Maybe so, but other KVM solutions I've used never had this issue moving between my Mac Studio and MacBook Pro (both Apple Silicon). If bluetooth did get spotty, Apple should build it robust enough to try to reconnect immediately and it does not. You know how I know? Try this next time your cursor disappears from the other machine. On the host, keep "System Settings" open and click on "Displays" ....it will instantly reconnect. You will only see one machine but as soon as you click the remote machine will reappear instantly. This is an issue on Apple's end, the simple fact that I can force it into a behavior where it instantly reconnects means Apple did not build this solution robust enough. I was even exploring running a cron job to kill UC everyone couple of minutes just to keep it refreshed. PLEASE FIX THIS APPLE!!!!

[Edited by Moderator]

You will have to submit your feedback direct to Apple

submit your Apple Feedback here: http://www.apple.com/feedback

Ahh yeah. I'm also on a Mac Studio (m2 tho), and can attest that the bluetooth/wireless reception is absolute trash. Similarly, my intel iMac worked 100% reliably for both universal control and my bluetooth headsets. I used to be able to be in my backyard with my Beats headset connected to my iMac on the complete other side of the house/lot and I'd never drop signal.

Now I can barely make it to the kitchen. I've tried everything to get that working properly too and no dice.

Hi all!

I’ve spent the last month going back and forth with Apple and going through my logs and they’ve finally been able to isolate the issue and it’s now going into their queue to work on a bug fix.

hopefully we’ll see a fix in the next Sonoma update or maybe the one after.

Just got off the phone with Apple Support and they said there's nothing to suggest other people are having it. They wanna take me down the route of making a new test volume to remove other applications etc. but I *know* it's not that. Really frustrating as it's a great feature, in theory. But I'm simply gonna have to try another solution (like a logitech multi channel keyboard/mouse or Synergy).

Should the root cause be investigated and fixed? yes, please and thank you.

Hence the reason I asked. It will take lots of feedback to get them to even look at it. If I had a ballpark figure to have it running I might be able to reproduce. You mentioned Bluetooth congestion. I only have keyboard and trackpad, but could connect a speaker. Does it take more than that?

How has this been working for you the past 10 days?

My computers are already both on my 5ghz wifi network to try to eliminate the possibility of my (relatively crowded) 2.4ghz environment interfering and it's still very bad. I'd make them their own SSID if that does fix it.

I agree it has gotten worse for me too. Your tip of having the displays tab open has saved my *** because it’s doing it every few minutes now.

I have already tried the iCloud reset and it did nothing. I even had my Mac Studio fully wiped so the Genius Bar could take a look at the Bluetooth headphones issue and that didn’t fix it either.

ACGarland wrote:

Who on earth doesn't need to be able to type with a keyboard on their phone during the working day?

Do you mean an external keyboard? Not only have I never used an external keyboard with a phone (iPhone, Android, or several others), but I can't imagine I would ever need to do so. So in answer to your question, "Me".

I tried Barrier as a stopgap in my initial troubleshooting too but it ended up doing the same behaviour, same as you.

I'm hoping now that the real tech guys have found the issue there will be a bugfix in Sonoma 14.6, 14.7 or Sequoia.