Continuity is great, when it works

I'm here writing about my issues with Continuity/Handoff/iCloud and how I manage to fix them.

I have 6 devices connected to my iCloud:

- iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 8.1);

- Retina iPad Mini (iOS 8.1);

- Retina MacBook Pro 15" mid 2012 (Yosemite);

- Mac Mini mid 2012 (Yosemite);

- iPhone 4S (iOS 8.1);

- iPod Touch (some old generation, iOS 6).

For this exercise's sake, let's give them (just the ones that matter for this) fake device names, you will understand why later on:

- iPhone: Luke;

- iPad: Han;

- MacBook: Falcon;

- Mac Mini: DeathStar.

They are all connected to a 5GHz wifi network (TimeCapsule).

The iPhone 4S is always running just because I have a personal number on it and I want SMS relay from that number. iPod Touch is old and used for music in my car. Let's not consider the iPod Touch for this exercise as it's offline all the time and too old to have anything to do with the problems faced here.

So what is the problem?

When iOS 8 and Yosemite came out I was very excited about Continuity. Not just handoff or SMS relay or the ability to make calls from a Mac, but the whole thing, everything together.

Everything was working great for some time until I had a problem with FileVault 2 in my Mac: it was impossible to login. Some people had the same problem and after days of troubleshooting I decided to do a clean Yosemite install (first time since mid 2012).

Anyway, the result was a clean install of Yosemite, it's actually not a bad idea to do this from time to time. I used to do clean installs of Windows every 6 months when I was a PC user.

So after the clean Yosemite install, the OS was great: faster, cleaner, without all the stuff I installed just to try them out in the past and were left behind. Great, but I noticed one problem: no handoff.

So this week I had some spare time and decided to investigate the issue. Here is the situation:

- Handoff works great from iPad to iPhone and Mac Mini, but not to MacBook;

- Handoff works great from iPhone to Mac Mini, works ok from iPhone to iPad (it seats on the iPad for a while but if I don't click it, it goes away) and not at all to MacBook;

- Handoff works great from Mac Mini to iPhone and iPad, but not to MacBook;

- Handoff doesn't work from/to iPhone 4S because it's not compatible;

- Instant hotspot works great throughout all devices but MacBook;

- SMS Relay works everywhere;

- Calls work fine everywhere.

So except for the iPhone not keeping handoff for too long to the iPad, everything but the MacBook works fine. So for a couple of days, I was focused on the MacBook.

So I found this thread and thought to myself that could be it, even tho I tried some of that stuff before. But I decided to follow those steps anyway and I did a few times. It did not help at all. The part I hate the most is the "sign out of iCloud" bit as it deletes everything and when you sign back in, you have to sync everything again and SOME TIMES things go a bit wrong and you end up with duplicate contacts, for example. But I did it anyway.

One other thread was talking about 5GHz wifi networks causing the issue, so I jumped to the 2.4GHz network, but no luck.

A few things got special attention from my side on that: bluetooth and AirDrop. I tried lots of things with bluetooth but that didn't help either so my next step was checking if everything was ok with AirDrop. And guess what? It was not.

First of all, the MacBook could see them all and actually send them files, but the other devices could not see the MacBook. Then again, that also made me think the problem was the MacBook. But something else caught my eye: While my wife's devices where showing up as her name, my own devices were showing up wrong. Here is how it's supposed to be:

Because the devices know themselves, they should show up with my iCloud registered name and what the device is under the name. Let's say Firstname Lastname and iPhone under that. The Mac Mini has no Contacts synced so it will show the device names: Falcon, Luke, Han, and my wife's devices.

It was working like that for a while but then again I could not see my MacBook in other devices' AirDrops. So after a few iCloud sign outs and back ins on the MacBook, things went to ****: instead of showing my name, it showing my iCloud email address, something like "myemail@icloud.com" and what the device is under that, like iPhone. And my photo disappeared.

That gave me the final clue I needed: the problem was with iCloud, not the MacBook. So here is what I did to solve the problem. It's quite simple but as I said before, it's the thing I hate the most.

- First, sign out of iCloud in every single device, selecting the Delete option every time you are asked;

- Second, turn off all devices.

With all devices out of iCloud and turned off, start going the opposite way, one by one. For example:

- Turn MacBook back on and sign in to iCloud;

- Turn iPhone back on and sign in to iCloud;

- Turn iPad back on and sign in to iCloud;

- Turn Mac Mini back on and sign in to iCloud.

When you turn the first device back on, even before signing back in to iCloud you will get popup messages like "your email was used to sign in to iCloud in another device" or something like that. This proves that even tho you are not connected to iCloud and your devices are off, iCloud still knows who you are and what devices you have.

And when you sign back in you will have to go through the prompts for merging Safari data, keychain access, etc. It's part of life.

Anyway, after doing that with all devices I use with my iCloud account, things didn't work straight away. That's because all these devices have to sync again. But slowly, one by one, they could see each other properly in AirDrop and handoff and Instant Hotspot came back to life on the MacBook and now EVERYTHING works beautifully. As I read in another thread, someone who called Apple Support with similar issue got a response like "it should just work". And it should, but when things go wrong, not even Apple Support people know how to fix it.

You might or might not agree with me about the pain it is to sign out and back in to iCloud, and if you do I have one thing to say: that's life 😟

So I hope this helps you if you are having similar issues. In the end of the day, my problem was iCloud going nuts.