Yosemite : Handoffs Problem

The only service that needs to work is ICloud and of course you need to be able to login to your Wifi network. If this is working, then I don't see that Keychain has anything else to do with it.

Maybe I can't tell. I did not program and create the guts of Yosemite. Logical reasoning leads normally to the correct solution but without the knowledge of the "guts" of the technology your guess is as good as mine.

This seems to have fixed my handoff problem. It is working in both directions -- at least for now 🙂

Thanks!

Here's what fixed it for me...

But first, here's my background:

I have a macbook pro early 2011

I opened up my mac and installed a BTLE 4.0 card

I used the github handoff activation tool https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/

With the above, I was able to get handoff to work but will a strange twist. At home where i did all this it only worked in one direction (mac to iPhone).

I took the mac to work where it worked in both directions.

I took it back home -- determined to figure this out -- i tried everything i could find online (keychain, deleting com.apple.Bluetooth.plist, reseting the PRAM, and much more). No joy.

The I noticed that the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist i deleted was gone! And restarting bluetooth nor rebooting nor PRAM reset would bring it back and the copy i thought i made was nowhere to be found.

So, used Terminal and Find to see if there was another copy of com.apple.Bluetooth.plist hidden somewhere

Nothing!

Until i started adding wild cards to the Find command. Find ~/ -iname "com.apple.*Bluetooth*.plist found one in the ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost folder

The file was named com.apple.Bluetooth.8B54D2D0-xxxx-57E7-xxxxx-48DAxxx9673A.plist (for this post i've substituted some of the actual digits with 'xxx' to protect the innocent) LOL

I saved a copy of the plist file for safe keeping

I used Apple's Property List Editor to open this plist file.

I deleted all RecentDevices and FavoriteDevices. I had 6 and 1 respectively

I turned Bluetooth off, waited a few seconds and turned it back on (not sure if this step is necessary or not

I checked the plist file again and it was still clean

And BAM! My handoff is working like a charm

Update: As i said, after removing the entries from the plist file, handoff started working as advertised. So, i then repaired my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Apple Bluetooth Trackpad with my Mac -- and the old problem returned; my Mac would no longer pickup the Handoff from my iPhone but it worked in the other direction. I promptly unpaired the keyboard and trackpad and everything worked again.

^ tjnelsonjunior's solution was the one that worked for me.

My handoff was working iPad to iPhone but not iPhone to iPad. I know the iPhone is fine because it does iPhone to Mac alright. I followed tjnelsonjunior's instruction except modifying the Mac part to iPad. It worked immediately.

Hence, I believe this is the generic solution for "handoff working from A to B but not B to A".

- Switch off B.

- Turn off bluetooth on A

- Turn on bluetooth on A

- Restart B

I believe the problem stems from A somehow losing its ability to pair with B, and by resetting the bluetooth and having B "appearing to" A anew this establishes the pairing again.

Apple should try to automate this process.

I am happy to confirm that I installed the 10.10.1 beta of OS X yesterday and for the first time, handoff works perfectly now in both directions on my Macbook Pro. Previously, I could resume a handoff from my MBP to my iPhone but nothing ever popped up in OS X as it was supposed to. It seems they've fixed some issues!

Marc0janssen you have my apologies as I now realize that Keychain is far more involved with Handoff than I realized, storing the encryption keys that make the whole process work. I have also learned quite a bit about the process by watching the consoles of both my Macbook and my IOS devices.

At the moment, both Continuity and Handoff features are working as expected with the exception that I do not receive Handoffs on my IPhone from my Macbook although I do receive them from my IPad and my IPad receives all Handoffs from my Macbook. As to why this one direction is not working I have no clue except that I note that the IPhone console does not indicate "Received a new Handoff advertisement" from my Macbook when it should. This seems to me to be just another description of the issue rather than a clue to resolving it.

What is weird is that for a while, It was working the other way around. I created a new user account to test and everything was fine there and when I signed back into my normal account everything still was working until the Macbook to IPhone direction stopped.

Given that most of the feature set is working I am tempted to leave it alone and see if the upcoming update will fix although I am tempted to try this fix from matthewadams:

1) Signing out of iCloud

2) Deleting the Apple ID from the User (SysPrefs -> Users & Groups -> right click on username for "Advanced" -> Apple ID)

3) Deleting the com.apple.ids and sharingd.plist files

4) Clearing the keychain (login items)

5) reboot, sign back into iCloud

Its possible I guess that resetting the keychain would do some of this but I am trying to resist doing anything with the remotest chance of causing other issues given that it is only one direction of one device handoff that is out of order.

Just thought this might help.

(BTW, I personally would not "clear the keychain" as I am not sure what that means but I would try deleting the Handoff encryption keys)

Hi sgmerley, Thats' ok.. no problems! We both don't work at Apple's, we both did not create the guts of Yosemite.

It's hard to guess what's going wrong with handoff... 🙂

For my Hands off is stable now, sometimes the link is lost but after some time it "fixes itself" again and suddenly it starts working again.

I reckon there can be a whole series of things that can go wrong with the technology and it sure it is not robust yet.

Just an update on the situation.....installed both the Yosemite 10.10.1 and IOS 8.8.1 updates and the Handoff situation remains the same which is working in all directions and between all devices except that my MBA does not Handoff to my IPhone.

Agreed, seeing similar behavior here. Also still seeing only one way handoff with 10.10.1 and 8.1.1

For the first time, Handoff is now working properly across all my devices...LOL. I have to assume that things are being changed at the server level to account for this madness but lets see if the change, whatever it was, sticks this time.

I was having the problem of handoff from Mac to Phone worked but not Phone to Mac. After searching everywhere with no luck i finally came across Casey-Al's Plist advice and now everything's working perfectly. This obviously has to do with bluetooth device conflicts. Thanks!

Until i started adding wild cards to the Find command. Find ~/ -iname "com.apple.*Bluetooth*.plist found one in the ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost folder

The file was named com.apple.Bluetooth.8B54D2D0-xxxx-57E7-xxxxx-48DAxxx9673A.plist (for this post i've substituted some of the actual digits with 'xxx' to protect the innocent) LOL

I saved a copy of the plist file for safe keeping

I used Apple's Property List Editor to open this plist file.

I deleted all RecentDevices and FavoriteDevices. I had 6 and 1 respectively

I turned Bluetooth off, waited a few seconds and turned it back on (not sure if this step is necessary or not

I checked the plist file again and it was still clean

And BAM! My handoff is working like a charm

I hope it continues to work for you but my experience has been that whatever seems to fix it only works for a time and then it stop working again suggesting, once again that various changes force the server to re-initialize and then something breaks yet again. I think only Apple can figure out how to stop this from happening. My system worked fine for two days and then all Handoffs to and from the IPhone stopped.

Well, sgmerley is right however i have some bad news and some good news. First the bad news...on November 18 I installed the latest OS X 10.10.1 on my Early 2011 MacBook Pro (with the BTLE4.0 hardware installed) and updated my iPhone 6 to IOS 8.1.1 and handoff quit working altogether -- but we knew that would happen! So, the good news is I reinstalled and ran dokterdoks continuity handoff tool v1.1.2 and followed the post-install instructions (most notably resetting my iCloud account) and handoff has been working in both directions flawlessly ever since.