Bluetooth Bug: AirPods switching to Android kills an unrelated Bluetooth mouse on macOS — reboot required

stevemadere wrote:

Bluetooth Bug: AirPods switching to Android kills an unrelated Bluetooth mouse on macOS — reboot required

Someone at Apple, please take note:

That's not going to happen here. This is a user forum. If you want Apple to take note of it, contact Apple support.

I seem to have stumbled onto a particularly nasty macOS Bluetooth bug.

The setup:•

MacBook Pro with Logitech ERGO M575 Bluetooth trackball

• AirPods 4 ANC, paired with both MacBook and Android phone

• AirPods initially connected to MacBook

The trigger: Explicitly connect the AirPods from Android, taking over their audio connection from the Mac.

The result: The Mac completely stops responding to the Logitech trackball. No pointer movement, no clicks. The built-in trackpad continues working.

Restarting bluetoothd, cycling Bluetooth, and power-cycling the mouse don't restore functionality.

It gets worse. After removing the mouse from the Mac's paired devices, subsequent pairing attempts fail. The mouse appears in Nearby Devices without a Connect button. Sometimes two copies of the same mouse appear, neither connectable• .

The mouse itself works perfectly: I paired it with an iPad and verified normal operation.

I dug into macOS's HID and Bluetooth subsystems:

The mouse's IOHIDUserDevice and AppleUserHIDEventService objects remain registered even with Bluetooth disabled.

• HID input-report counters stop advancing.

• system_profiler no longer lists the mouse as a Bluetooth device.

macOS's Bluetooth discovery database contains four separate identities• for the same mouse, with consecutive Bluetooth addresses.

• The paired-device database contains no corresponding records.

This looks like a Bluetooth LE connection/pairing state-management failure, potentially triggered by an unrelated AirPods audio handoff. The exact underlying cause isn't established.

Rebooting the Mac has restored functionality in the past, but none of the normal Bluetooth resets worked.

I've submitted a bug report through Apple's public macOS feedback form.

Has anyone else experienced a Bluetooth audio-device transition breaking unrelated Bluetooth HID devices on macOS?

I'd be especially interested in reports involving AirPods, Logitech BLE mice, and macOS Tahoe.

What mouse?

Do you mean the Logitech trackball?

Sounds more like a problem with the trackball than anything else.

What did Logitech say when you reported the problem to them?