2018 Mac Mini bluetooth and Wi-Fi interference

Like you, upgraded from 2012 to 2018. A little sad and excited. Though six year, my 2012 (quad core) never missed a beat and everything - just worked.

Unfortunately, Wifi & Bluetooth dropouts on my 2018 model have been nothing but trouble. That is, until I changed my modem Wifi setting to 5ghz.

Since then, no drop outs. Older usb cables work and problem solved. If it wasn't for the forum, I would have taken it back. Struggled through for almost two months.

Still glad I upgraded, however, find myself thinking of the previous trouble free experience....

High noise = Interference.

I started untangling and unplugging cables. I untangled the monitor cable and had it run away from everything else. The noise decreased to -77 dBM. This is still high but it was enough to improve the Wifi speed to 15 Mbps.

Then, I unplugged all of the cables from the Mac Mini and turned off the monitor. Then, I used Remote Desktop to connect to the Mac Mini. The noise went down to -93 dBM (identical to the laptop noise). The Wifi speed was 15 Mbps but Remote Desktop was using some of the bandwidth. Therefore, it was probably really 20 Mbps.

Now, when I plug the monitor into the laptop computer, the Wifi signal for the laptop goes down to -77 dBM

So, the interference is from the wires. Problem was reproduced on laptop (MacBook Pro 15), so I can't really blame the Mac Mini as the problem.

I hope that my explanation of my testing is clear enough to show others how to troubleshoot if they have similar problems.

So, I guess that I need to try using a Wifi booster to get a better signal to over power the noise and/or upgrade my WiFi to 801.11ac.

Also, I need better shielded cables. When purchasing cables, how do you know which have better shielding?

UPDATE.... I've been systematically removing each device with no luck.

However, once I remove one of my monitors, it works no problems. I have dual monitors set up... one plugged directly into HDMI port, one using the Apple dongle. When both monitors are plugged in and working, there are issues. When only one monitor (either one) is plugged in, everything works fine. Seems to be a problem with my Mac Mini supporting two monitors. Calling Apple again :(

Like you, upgraded from 2012 to 2018. A little sad and excited. Though six year, my 2012 (quad core) never missed a beat and everything - just worked.

Unfortunately, Wifi & Bluetooth dropouts on my 2018 model have been nothing but trouble. That is, until I changed my modem Wifi setting from to 5ghz.

No drop outs. Older usb cables work and problem solved. If it wasn't for the forum, I would have taken it back. Struggled through for almost two months.

Still glad I upgraded, however, find myself thinking of the previous trouble free experience....

In the end these ferrite rings solved ~ 85% of the problem.

Finally, this type of rf blocking fabric seems to have squelched the other 15%. Three sides of the mini are shielded by fabric to eliminate interference from DirecTv receiver, external hard drive, and below the mini for good measure. The fabric was trimmed and placed on the walls of the computer cabinet with double stick tape so that it looks better than aluminum foil and is not apparent on a quick glance (the wife tolerates it so, it can't be too bad). Not intending to advertise Amazon, but I found these items there. It did take $50 worth of add-ons and about six months to get to this point. Sure seems like Apple could have taken care of this on a $2300 computer.

Update... after several days of testing, I've FINALLY managed to keep the magic mouse connected. EVERY SINGLE cable is wrapped in aluminum foil about 6 - 7 " from the connector at the back of the mac. AND, the USB-C hub is also wrapped in foil as well. If any of these cables are not wrapped, it drops. WiFi speeds are averaging 50 - 60 mbps. (BTW... my wired computer maxes out at 500Mbps every time).

Been talking with several people at IT places. They have noticed that a lot of new laptops (that have USB-C connectors) have the insides of their cases sprayed with a copper paint. Perhaps coating the cables with a product like that might help and would look better than it does now.

I posted on this thread about my experiences with Magic Mouse and new mini. I have two hubs, one is expensive Belkin 4 port USB3 hub with beefy looking cable and the other is a cheapo Chinese with very thin USB cable.

Belkin interferes, with or without devices attached. Cheapo Chinese, zero mouse issues.

Same Problem, but I think that I could solve it.

I used an USB hub (Type A) and I changed it today with an USB Hub with USB-C Connector.

No Issues anymore.

I had the same issue with one of the latest MBPros with USB-C ports.

As other posters have noted the problem is interference in the 2.4GHz band due to leakage from poor quality USB-C cables.

Intel wrote a white paper on this in 2012: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/universal-serial-bus/usb3-frequency-interference-paper.html

In my case it was USB-C to 3 x USB 3.0 hub with a 15cm lead.

The solution was simply to wrap the lead in aluminium (or tin) foil.

Problem solved!

I have no brief for Apple but this is not strictly a problem with the Mac mini - it's the low quality cables and shielding on external USB-C devices.

I have two USB-C to 3 x USB 3 hubs on my Mac mini - 2 from the same manufacturer work perfectly, the other needs foil wrapped around the cable to stop it licking bluetooth and WiFi.

What I find really annoying about Apple is its crazy policy of pushing connection standards that few others use and sending us all into dongle ****.

Unless that changes my 2015 MBPro with convenient USB 3 and HDMI ports and and SD Card slot (plus2 useless Thunderbolt 2 ports) will be my last. With the Mac mini it's not so bad as it - and it's current 3 dongles - is not moved around.

For both laptop and Mini, with the Option key depressed, click on the wifi icon in the upper menu bar. A window will open giving details about the connected network. Make a screen shot for each computer and post then here.

But the transmission rate of the min @48Mbps is lower than the 54 for the laptop.

What router do you have? Both computers are connecting to 802.11g network that is old and slow.

G is also only 2.4 GHz. Next better network is N which has both 2.4 and 5 GHz. and is faster. Best would be AC which is 5 GHz only.

Also, you are running WEP security. That very very old encryption can easily be hacked in under 10 minutes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840943

I would get a new router that supports AC and N and WAP2 encryption.

My problem was inconsistent, variable and slow internet speeds. The ferrite cores from Amazon shown below solved my problem. I'm not sure what the culprit was but installing these ferrite cores on power, data, and ethernet cables solved the issue. It's been 4 days now with no problems. That $12 purchase fixed what was beginning to look like a $2300 mistake. I saw them mentioned on a forum, but I don't remember which one.

MK, what I found was couple things I did before the router. So I am not sure which did it. A significant change was when I moved my wifi printer (epson 2500) about 10 feet away from my Mac mini. I also moved the 2.4 ghz router about 5 feet away from mini. That didn’t seem to change anything. But what seemed to make another big change was use a HDMI cable and not the VGA cable from my HP monitor. That seemed to change everything. Would I move my printer back next to mini? Maybe if I am the mood to juggle cables around. LOL. On one of the blogs entries its said to use ferrite to surround cables. I did that on the power cable of the. HP monitor (both sides of cable). So no disconnecting of track pad 2 or keyboard 2 both from apple. But I do have once in awhile my entire monitor goes black and then comes back on ok. But sometimes it goes all snow and I have to hard reset by holding down the power switch to reboot it. Then it’s ok. I doesn’t happen much. Maybe twice in a month (I have my Mac mini 2018 for about 1 12 month. All said. I did change it to 5 Ghz and of course don't know if it works or not.

@Coqui13, feel your pain with the iMac, luckily I have just purchased an Alienware computer for daily chores and have set the Mac aside exclusively for managing photo library duties. Whilst the AW 17R5 is exceptional, Win10 still has its quirks with such a customised build so even with that it’s not all plain sailing.

I am replying due to your keyboard issue, I suffered similar and ended up having to remove keyboard batteries and then hold the power button on the keyboard for much longer than the stated time which didn’t just put numbers up for Bluetooth pairing but put the keyboard into some kind of reset (eg drops all remembered connections) mode. From memory I think I got a flashing light on the keyboard and then it finally connected. I think I may have connected it to another apple device in the past and it was focussed on this. I couldn’t locate any Bluetooth.plist files to delete in Mojave. Other than this try the Bluetooth reset function by (I think), holding down either the SHIFT and OPTION buttons whilst clicking the Bluetooth bar (if you have it set to on show on the top toolbar) and run the debug option. Apologies if you’ve tried all this already but thought it was worthy of mention.

I’d attach a screenshot but when I just tried to take a photo using my Apple iPhone camera uploading to an Apple forum it said it can’t do it because the image is over 5Mb; just about says it all

:-(

Good luck getting some fixes.