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garrywithtwo

macrumors newbie
Aug 22, 2019
2
1
I wonder how well it would work to call them about it and ask them to send a trackpad since those obviously will work while plugged in. This is the only fair solution I see since they sold us all a device with faulty bluetooth connectivity. There's 16 pages of evidence here, I don't see why there hasn't been a recall or something
 
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inmnbob

macrumors regular
Aug 6, 2014
247
87
Chicago and Twin Cities
I had posted a lot on this forum about a year ago as I was one of the early adopters for the Mac mini. I can say that I have finally got the Mac mini Bluetooth working 99% of the time. I had to mess with the connections and hubs to get there. I now have a mouse, keyboard and track pad as well as a midi Bluetooth keyboard all working. I can also use my EarPods and Beats wireless. I did finally reposition the mini on its side and didn’t use the outermost USB port.
 

nanoant

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
24
88
Baden, Switzerland
Well, I want to share an alternative solution that works without standing Mac mini on its back or messing with cables or USB ports. This is also an update to my previous effort described to Aug 23, 2019 in this thread.

All you need is a $20 Bluetooth USB dongle. It has to be use chip that has built-in driver in macOS. I use StarTech USBBT1EDR4 dongle based on CSR8510 A10 chip that is supported out of the box. In general any USB dongle using CSR8510 should work for you. If you find other dongle working too, please share. NOTE: The device must be proper USB dongle, not UART via USB (see below why).

Once you got the dongle, it is easy to plug it in. But the tricky part is to TURN OFF existing broken built-in Bluetooth permanently so it remains off after reboot. After few attempts using private APIs, numerous reboots and studying assembly of Apple's Bluetooth drivers I finally found undocumented NVRAM setting. :D Here it is:

sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01

It prevents UART transport based driver from probing the devices, which effectively disables built-in Mac mini Bluetooth that uses UART interface, but leaving USB transport enabled - which makes our USB dongle only one dongle in the system, thus default active one.

If this works for you too, please let me know. Now finally I can enjoy stutter free, butter smooth mouse action for extra $20. I hope you can too.

SIDE NOTES:

The nvram setting above is crucial, anything else will fail to work, e.g.
  1. Switching active Bluetooth host device via Bluetooth Explorer utility makes it active only until next reboot
  2. sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=always well known documented nvram setting - recommended in few places to make USB dongle default (active) Bluetooth host device, works only when you are plugging the dongle in while system is already running. When system is booted with USB dongle already plugged in then (at least here on 10.14.6) built-in dongle remains active. Additionally built-in dongle also often becomes active (again) after computer wake.
 
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pinkoos

macrumors 6502a
May 15, 2005
590
64
Texas
Thanks for posting your solution. Do you have the BT dongle attached via a USB 3.0 extension cable, or is it plugged directly into the USB 3.0 port on the back of the mini?
 

nanoant

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
24
88
Baden, Switzerland
Thanks for posting your solution. Do you have the BT dongle attached via a USB 3.0 extension cable, or is it plugged directly into the USB 3.0 port on the back of the mini?
I tried both. To be honest did not see much difference, both worked well, but with 50cm cable at the moment plugged to one of USB 3.0 ports I have confidence there's nothing on the way. Moreover, before I found the way to permanently disable built-in radio, I had to constantly plug in & out the dongle to activate it, so having it on the extension cable was much easier than doing yoga behind Mac mini.
 
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pinkoos

macrumors 6502a
May 15, 2005
590
64
Texas
This one has worked well for me

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GFX0PY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I connect mine via a USB2 extension cable to a USB3 hub as far as possible from my Mini. I have played with the various nvram configs, sometimes the dongle is primary after reboot other times not and I have to reactivate via BT Explorer. I will try the @nanoant suggestion.
Any way to know if yours has the CSR8510 A10 chipset mentioned above?
 

gages

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2016
121
34
From about
 

Attachments

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    Screen Shot 2019-09-06 at 12.11.09 PM.png
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nanoant

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
24
88
Baden, Switzerland
Any way to know if yours has the CSR8510 A10 chipset mentioned above?
It does not need to be CSR8510 A10. It is just a tip what device is known to work, if you are looking to buy one, as not all BT dongles are supported by macOS built-in drivers. If you have Broadcom one that works out the box then it is great, please then share the exact product name.
What is most important is that your BT dongle uses USB transport not UART. Because this is what makes sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01 be effective to turn on built-in UART transport based Mac mini radio.
Here's how it look on my side.
upload_2019-9-7_14-9-22.png
 
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gages

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2016
121
34
@nanoant nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01 turns on the UART or turns it off? I think %01 means off and %00 means on.

BTW, how on earth did you figure this out?
 

deviant

macrumors 65816
Oct 27, 2007
1,187
275
super strange things are happening to mine.
I have playstation 4 joypad connected to bluetooth and AirPods. both work until they both lose connection. when it happens, the kernel process eats up 15% of the 6 core cpu, goes like that for 20 seconds and even if you go to the preferences bluetooth the windows hangs and never loads bluetooth preferences (same thing with menu bar, just hangs and does not load the bluetooth dropdown menu. then after 20 seconds both reconnect. I had the original aluminum keyboard attached to usb-a. bought a usb-c to usb-a dongle and connected to one of the usb-c ports. still the same issue...
I'm lost here...

this happens sporadically, meaning that after 1 disconnect it can go on for 1 hour or 2 but then happens again,
 
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gages

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2016
121
34
Did the 10.14.6 supplemental update today and the USB dongle was primary post reboot, first time that has every happened!
 

aawil

macrumors 6502a
May 18, 2008
542
165
Do usb 2.0 devices cause the same problems? I bought mine just waiting on my usbc monitor to come but I was wondering if I can use the 1 port for my mm-1 speakers which are usb 2.0. I bought a monitor with 3 usb3 slots so I didn't have to use the minis to avoid these issues.
 

nanoant

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
24
88
Baden, Switzerland
@nanoant nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01 turns on the UART or turns it off? I think %01 means off and %00 means on.
It skips controllers running on UART - thus turning off UART based Bluetooth controllers, such as Mac mini one - or rather NOT turning them ON during system startup.

BTW, how on earth did you figure this out?
Doing strings on Bluetooth drivers living in /System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns to look for some settings-like text, then reading assembly to see where this string is used. Apple is quite known to have power-user settings nvram or defaults settings. Much less than they used to provide back in 10.4 - 10.6 days. Luckily there was one, as there is no easy way to disable system driver without disabling SIP.
 

Heat_Fan89

macrumors 68030
Feb 23, 2016
2,537
3,233
I just received my 15 Mini and so far I haven't had a single BT issue. No skips or lag with my TouchPad 2 or original Apple BT Keyboard. Since i'm sharing the keyboard and TouchPad 2 with two Mini's (2012 and 2018) I have two pair the two if I switch computers but so far so good.

Also my Mini shipped with 10.14.5 so I don't know if the .6 update causes issues. I'm skipping the update as i'm planning on going straight to Catalina in a couple of weeks.
 

nanoant

macrumors newbie
Jan 15, 2015
24
88
Baden, Switzerland
(...) Also my Mini shipped with 10.14.5 so I don't know if the .6 update causes issues. I'm skipping the update as i'm planning on going straight to Catalina in a couple of weeks.
I doubt this had anything to do with 10.14.6. I'd say this is hardware design flaw (such as improper shielding, distance from antenna pathways on PCB, I am not an expert there). This becomes noticeable once you plug more (possibly high-bandwidth) devices into mini's ports. This hasn't bothered me until I started use external SSD and plugged some MIDI devices. So, do you have lots of stuff plugged into mini?
Also, since your mini is brand new device (mine has 9 months) you may have received some fixed hardware revision. But that's just speculation. Still what sucks most is that Apple remains tight lipped about this issue, also there at their Feedback site, which I have not received single response about this issue. Not to mention other bugs, such as Apple TV playback crashing when playing 4K videos shared from Mac mini and recorded with iPhone - all Apple's products.
 

fallsilent

macrumors member
Apr 9, 2011
65
26
I like many people are having bluetooth connectivity issues with my Mac mini so I took to these forums to try to find a solution. I tried using the bluetooth dongle with the "sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01" in Terminal suggestion to no avail.

My question is, how to I turn bluetooth back on? I tried "sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%00" but it does not work. None of my stock bluetooth services are available. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance....
 

Yuck9

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2014
86
38
California
I doubt this had anything to do with 10.14.6. I'd say this is hardware design flaw (such as improper shielding, distance from antenna pathways on PCB, I am not an expert there). This becomes noticeable once you plug more (possibly high-bandwidth) devices into mini's ports. This hasn't bothered me until I started use external SSD and plugged some MIDI devices. So, do you have lots of stuff plugged into mini?
Also, since your mini is brand new device (mine has 9 months) you may have received some fixed hardware revision. But that's just speculation. Still what sucks most is that Apple remains tight lipped about this issue, also there at their Feedback site, which I have not received single response about this issue. Not to mention other bugs, such as Apple TV playback crashing when playing 4K videos shared from Mac mini and recorded with iPhone - all Apple's products.

It's not software. It's hardware.
 

gages

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2016
121
34
I like many people are having bluetooth connectivity issues with my Mac mini so I took to these forums to try to find a solution. I tried using the bluetooth dongle with the "sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%01" in Terminal suggestion to no avail.

My question is, how to I turn bluetooth back on? I tried "sudo nvram SkipIOBluetoothHostControllerUARTTransport=%00" but it does not work. None of my stock bluetooth services are available. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance....

When you load BT Explorer can you select the internal v USB dongle?
 
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