El Capitan - Bluetooth Not Available

Bluetooth disappeared after 10.11.4 update. I download the OSX Combo 10.11.4 - Download OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Combo Update - and ran it. After a full restart, Bluetooth is back again. All working fine.

The sudo commands you proposed do not work for me.

SMC reset works fine, but I am tired of shutting down everytime I reconnect ... I may have done it for over 6 months at least once a day ...

APPLE seriously? This seems to be an important problem for many users!!

I migrated my account from an older iMac running Yosemite to my brand new iMac running El Capitan. After a couple of reboots, I also lost my mouse support. Hopefully I had the wired keyboard and an old wired Microsoft mouse in my cupboard. So I could at least have the ability to check the System Report. I also got the BlueTooth feature missing.

I rebooted in diagnostic mode (Press D while powering on). No problem detected and the mouse was working OK.

So I rebooted in normal mode with my migrated account, went into the Library/Preferences folder and deleted all the Bluetooth related plist files:

- com.apple.Bluetooth.plist

- com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.lockfile

Some were obviously heritated from my Yosemite Mac and may not be compatible with El Capitan.

I rebooted and my Bluetooth support was back and the Magic Mouse 2 was working OK. New plist files have been created.

I don't have a solution either, just a workaround, as I've been experiencing this issue since upgrading my brand-new iMac 27" Retina (late 2015) to 10.11.4 (it was sold with 10.11.3). Here's a description of my issue (similar, but not quite the same, as to the ones mentioned here):

After a reboot, Bluetooth is shown as "not available" (the Bluetooth icon is greyed out and crossed with a lightning), and my MagicMouse 2 does not respond.

Deleting preferences (plist files) does not help . But when recreating them, I noticed that it seems trackpad prefs get written to even though there's no trackpad on this iMac... I also checked the console and there are dozens of warning messages - log files indicate Bluetooth service as not being available and "Missing Bluetooth Controller Transport".

I haven't tried: PRAM reset, SMC reset.

I have tried: deleting Bluetooth plist files, as well as shutting down the Mac, disconnecting all USB devices, waiting a few minutes, reconnecting everything and rebooting.

My only workaround is quite a funny one: when Bluetooth does not work, I plug my old Microsoft USB mouse to the USB port on my Apple keyboard and reboot. When the Mac reboots with this mouse attached, the Bluetooth service / controllers load normally and my iMac sees MagicMouse 2 and both live happily ever after until the next reboot.

FWIW:

• Putting the iMac to sleep does not seem to affect or reproduce the Bluetooth issue. Only rebooting with the MagicMouse connected does.
• My Bluetooth controller is also Broadcomm, firmware v114 c4547 and Apple Bluetooth Software version 4.4.4f4 17685.
• This iMac was set up as a new iMac and I imported manually my documents, photos and application data. No "old" system or library data was transferred from my previous iMac.
• I've also filed a bug report with Apple.

Hi Macounette, same over here. Brand new iMac 27 late 2015, i7, 512 SSD, 8gb, as currently sold by the Apple store. Received and unboxed last week. Unlike you I've done a full auto-migration from my older 21.5" late 2009 (which BTW was already on 10.11.4, had first generation wireless keyboard & mouse and never had such a problem). Initial test run ok and excitement about performance & specs of the new hardware. After updating to 10.11.4. Bluetooth becomes "not available" practically upon each new boot and - here I am - I joined the party. Removed preferences and had initial success. But not for long. The Mac behaves as if there were no Bluetooth hardware installed. Found an Intel paper about interference between USB 3 & Bluetooth (referenced by Apple), read the suggestion from Apple to (each time !?) disconnect all USB periferals and attempt a reboot and I've quickly got fed up by all that. I connected a USB keyboard & USB mouse and I'm waiting for the issue to be properly sorted out. I've been using Apple products since the Apple II. This is the most sophisticated and expensive computer I ever purchased from them and it is really frustrating to see that key components of the set (which went wireless long ago) are that fragile...

Thanks for reading.

Hi sekok, thanks for your feedback. It's good to know I'm not alone in this situation and it seems indeed that the latest El Capitan release has brought along this new issue.

I have received a response for my bug filing in the Apple Bug Report platform, was asked to submit some additional information, so it seems they are working on it, maybe we will get a fix for this issue sometime soon. 🙂

Well, this definitely is an issue, I opened a support ticket and though the support team said they didn't have identified a common Blueooth problem they were not able to solve it either. It may be some kind of incompatibility with some software.

I am exchanging Blueooth debug data with support team at apple and waiting for their answer (which so far has been SMC reset, PRAM reset, bluetooth.plist removal, verify/repair permissions ... but it didn' work because the problem has again happened ...So next option would be reinstall from scratch.

My guesses are:

1. Incompatibility with Parallels Desktop ... any of you have this installed too?

2. Incompatibility with Adobe Reader upgrade last autumn ... any of you have this too?

3. just a generic bluetooth issue with magic mouse and bluetooth keyboard

I have to say though that the Apple support team seems dedicated and willing to help but they don't have a clear answer ... full reinstall is not an option unless it is the only option and clearly solves this problem ... has anyone tried that? any other ideas?

No Parallels Desktop installed (yet) and no Adobe Reader neither. I tend to think it's a generic issue with the Bluetooth controller software and some incompatibility with El Capitan.

Hi Gabriel, I have Acrobat reader DC installed (as however I had on my old iMac which I upgraded to 10.11.4 on march 28th. So I've been roughly one month on the latest El Capitan release on the old HW with no problems and with the very same apps installed. Pure luck? Maybe but difficult to believe as the issue than popped up immediately with the new HW, as soon as I installed 10.11.4. I tend to think that there must be a factor that takes into consideration the HW, it's components, it's firmware etc. Just my 5 cents about the issue.

In fact, after rebooting, the problem appeared again. So I deleted the plist, shutdown the iMac.

Then I have done a PRAM reset (Cmd+Alt+P+R immediately after power on till you hear the booting sound for a second time) and it worked OK then even after reboots. I cross my fingers.

Looks good, I zapped the PRAM when rebooting and after that Bluetooth seems normally available. 😀

I haven't rebooted since, however...

OK, so after rebooting a couple of times, the problem has disappeared ! 🙂 Fingers crossed it might stay that way.

In the meantime I had a short lucky experience after doing a safe boot (performed in order to complete an update from app store which was "hanging" and aborting). Automagically, once finished in safe mode, and rebooting in normal mode Bluetooth was available with no other action (no plist removal &tc). But unfortunately not for long. It did not survive the next reboot. Lately it is 100% "Not Available" upon each boot, so I'll give a try zapping the PRAM.

OK, zapped the PRAM (without removing the plist) and Bluetooth is back and survived a couple of reboots already. Fingers crossed here as well 🙂

Same issues here. I bought a 27 inch iMac yesterday. Took it home, unboxed it and all was fine - the one thing Apple is known for is having products which can be set up and run seamlessly straight out of the box.

I then updated the OS through the App store, which I thought was a sensible thing to do.

I am then left with no bluetooth functionality at all. I was on the phone to apple support for an hour - we did everything including the SMC restart, delisting the .plist files from Library/Preferences, reinstalling the OS in recovery mode... none of it has worked. During all of this, I had to go out and buy a wired mouse (which Apple support told me to do), as you can only progress so far in recovery mode without one. The only thing I can think of doing is doing now is a complete factory reset, which I can do because it is less than a day old and had no data transferred to it to begin with (but I haven't worked out how to do this yet).

I appreciate that there will always be bugs, but this is such a fundamental issue which renders a £1600 high end computer basically unusable, unless you go out and source/buy additional wired accessories.