El Capitan - Bluetooth Not Available

Thanks for this tip - it worked for me. I just upgraded to 10.12.3 and this is the second time my Bluetooth went to unavailable - always after an OS upgrade. Both times it was solved by unplugging all peripherals (I use a Startech.com Thunderbolt 2 4K Docking Station) and doing a shutdown/restart. I also reset my NVRAM just for good measure.

It may be a simple synchronization issue having to due with your online iCloud account. I had the same issue temporarily which is why I was able to read this post. All I did was restart my computer and it was back up. There was a little box that said something about "cannot connect to iCloud" which was probably the issue in the first place. All I did was reconnect to the internet and it was fixed. Yes it's ********, and APPLE is ********, but what can you do right? Hopefully that helps.

Bluetooth devices become unresponsive

Actually "just" a reboot will typically restore the Bluetooth function. And it doesn't always die when you sleep the laptop, but it seems to lose the plot if you sleep it with a Bluetooth device connected and it can't find the device when it wakes (eg you went out without your mouse).

But not always.

Most reliable work-around: use a wireless mouse with a USB dongle instead. *sheesh*

But actually this appears to be a known problem clashing with USB3. I have switched back from my Anker 8-port USB3 hub to my OWC thunderbolt dock to see if the situation keeps reoccurring now (I switched to the USB3 hub because I had too many devices 😮 so I've rationalised somewhat.

See here for interesting stuff: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/magic-mouse-and-bluetooth-option-is-dead-wit h-yosemite-10-10.1803267/

And, again, that is irrelevant. Read the page before you post a link; title says Bluetooth on that page but the info is about USB devices.

I've had no luck getting Bluetooth back at all since upgrading to El Capitan. Gone from preferences and the menu bar shows it not available.

Sounds like Apple has yet again dropped the ball on this one. I keep checking for updates, expecting them to release one to fix the problem that so many are having. Strange.

Reset the SMC.

Barry

Tried that as well the other day. No go. Unless the instructions I found elsewhere were wrong.

Resetting the SMC ("red herring" as you so quaintly phrase it) is a relatively standard troubleshooting step to take when Bluetooth is missing from a system. What you describe worked for you is a subset of a SMC reset - depending on the platform.

Resetting the SMC may be a "red herring" to you, but it works for many people. I am posting this for the benefit of others reading this thread so that no one is confused.

Barry

I am now looking at doing a clean install of El Capitan to replace my upgrade installation*. At this point I am thinking I will use Migration Assistant to put all my "stuff" back but I should probably plan to do a manual re-install of everything as that would be much cleaner. *sigh*

Do you always disconnect the headphones before sleeping the machine? I am having some success in improving reliability by always making sure I disconnect stuff when the machine is awake, rather than asleep. I have to anyway as a rule because of the mounted external hard disks but if I unmount, sleep and then unplug I have noticed more issues than if I unmount, unplug and then sleep.

*Sounds like overkill for a random Bluetooth issue I know but I am also having intermittent issues with the keychain access and iCloud and that can get serious pretty quickly. It's just a case of finding the time to do it...

I've been having the same serious issue on my iMac after (clean) installing El Capitan and the recent 10.11.1 upgrade.

Upon booting, no bluetooth apple keyboard to enter my account credentials.

I had to connect my usb keyboard to login to el Capitan to discover that system could not find the internal bluetooth circuit and therefore no bluetooth keyboard or magic mouse or trackpad !!!

Im sorry apple but this is unacceptable.

With some time consuming experimentation i found out that by disabling the FileVault encryption and rebooting

bluetooth was back on. I could now enter my credentials on the login screen with my apple wireless keyboard and once entering el capitan, bluetooth preference pane was back with all the bluetooth features.

I reported the bug to apple and until furter notice, make your system less secure by disabling FileVault.

At least that worked for me so far.

Bluetooth -> No information available (greek language) with FileVault enabled.

Update: Miraculously once i disabled FileVault, my iMessage on my iMac started to sync with my iphone and seems to be working fine. So i tend to think that FileVault is causing issues on many levels.

Tried this. Unfortunately it didn't work for me on my Macbook Pro. This continues to get more and more frustrating. It is odd that different "fixes" are posted as remedying the issue but they don't work for everyone. Had an update from Apple today; hoped it would fix it but no go. Guess I'll keep waiting. Just really strange! I'm not very familiar with the "back side" of OS X but I keep wondering if there isn't some registry (or whatever it'd be called) entry that needs to be changed to on or something...