El Capitan - Bluetooth Not Available

Installed new OS 10.11.6 and same issue. Tried to reset NVRAM. No luck.. Funny thing is BT keyboard & mouse work, but can only use basic properties. Function keys don't work and only single left or right click on mouse works, even though menu bar shows "Bluetooth Not Available". Weird and still if I restart in Safe mode it works...I wish Apple would find a fix already ....

I just purchased a 13-inch MacBook Pro, spent the better part of my evening trying to import my data, settings, applications, etc. from a desktop iMac Time Machine backup and then when I finally got things up and going was halted by this same "Bluetooth Not Available" message. Researched all the same methods of troubleshooting you have with no results at all, didn't even work for a little while. Finally, I realized I had my power plug and an external 27" display plugged into the laptop and wondered if I removed all connections to the laptop (as suggested in another troubleshooting article to remove all USB devices) would that work. And it did. So if you are stumped like I was, disconnect everything from the machine and startup from the battery (on a MacBook Pro) and hopefully it will work for anyone else experiencing what I experienced.

to me it happened after sleep, only sometimes, it's intermittent. the only two things which worked were rebooting the OS X and/or reloading Bluetooth module.

as mentioned in http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/156863/bluetooth-issues-after-sleep-in- os-x-yosemite-10-10

do this in Terminal, when BT does not work again and you don't have to reboot:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport
sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

reset SMC or PRAM did work - not because I reset it, but because a reboot was also involved.

I'm thinking if this has something to do when Mac goes to sleep when being connected... but it's only happening on my Macbook Pro mid 2012. not with iMac late 2012

FYI I have a similar issue did the same things you tried the only thing that worked for me was to disconnect the peripherals (thunderbolt monitor, Dell monitor and LaCie hard drive) and restart laptop and the bluetooth worked. Connected all units to laptop and continued to work.

I'm having this problem too. Just this afternoon, I came back to my MacBook and it was frozen (black screen, spinner going forever). I did a hard power-off (since there was no other way) and when it booted back up, Bluetooth was gone. No preferences panel, bluetooth icon says "Bluetooth: Not Available".

I have tried every solution proposed in this thread: reset SMC, NVRAM, turn off and disconnect USB and wait, kext unload/load. El Capitan 10.11.6 on MacBook Pro 13" (early 2015).

Judging by this thread, Apple doesn't seem too interested in solving the problem.

Yesterday I upgraded my 27" iMac to Sierra, thinking it might, just might, solve my lack of Bluetooth issue, that I have since I got this computer 8 months ago. Sierra did not correct a thing. I tried all the suggestions all over again & none of them worked. But whats really funny is that my Bluetooth keyboard & mouse work, but only in very basic mode. None of the function keys on keyboard work and mouse can only be used to left or right click. Scrolling doesn't work.

I wonder when Apple is going to realize that lots of us are having these issues and address the problem.

Even though there are work arounds, its still extremely frustrating..

This worked for me - 2011 27" iMac on El Capitan, quit recognizing bluetooth, no sys prefs visible, did not help to trash prefs file or reset PMU. Restarted, zapped the PRAM, nothing changed. But, after shutting down, unplugging both backup drives, letting it sit for 5 minutes, everything is fine on reboot. Able to plug drives back in and Bluetooth seems stable for now. Relief! We'll see, it is a 6 year old machine, but I have 29 Macs ranging from 2011 to 2016, and others retired that were older, I've never seen a loss of Bluetooth. Always something new.

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.

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.

Reset the SMC.

Barry

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

iMessage is refusing to work but at least Bluetooth seems to be working with FileVault disabled