What's Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is a wireless technology that makes short-range connections between devices (like your Mac, and a mouse or keyboard) at distances up to 10 meters (approximately 30 feet).

And with Bluetooth, your iPhone or iPad can create a 'Personal Hotspot' to provide Internet access for your Mac through your wireless service provider. Learn more about creating a Personal Hotspot with your iOS device.

Find out if your Mac has Bluetooth

Most Mac computers come with Bluetooth technology built-in. You can check to see if your computer supports Bluetooth:

Look for the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. If the Bluetooth icon is present, your computer has Bluetooth.
Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu, then click Bluetooth. If the Bluetooth preferences lists options for enabling Bluetooth and making your device discoverable, Bluetooth is installed.
From theApplemenu, choose About this Mac, then click More Info. Select Bluetooth from the Hardware section. If the Hardware Setting section shows information, your system has Bluetooth installed.

Printers must support the Bluetooth Hard Cable Replacement Profile (HCRP) and have a Mac OS X Bluetooth enabled printer driver. Headset support requires a Bluetooth enabled headset and either an internal Apple Bluetooth module or a D-Link DBT-120 rev. Consider downloading Bootcamp drivers on the macOS side and running them on the Windows side using setup.exe in the Bootcamp folder. This will give you the latest drivers for your specific Mac.

EDUP USB 3.0 Bluetooth WiFi Adapter AC1200Mbps with 6dBi Antenna 2.4G/5Ghz for PC, USB Wi-Fi Dongle Bluetooth 4.1 Receiver Wireless Network Adapters for Windows 10/8/8.1/7, Mac OS X 10.6-10.15 4.2 out of 5 stars 179. Access the Hidden Bluetooth Debug Menu in Mac OS X for Hardware Module Reset. Keep in mind this is going to disconnect every Bluetooth device on the Mac, so if you only have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you’re going to temporarily lose the ability to use those devices as the Bluetooth hardware module is reset.

About Bluetooth menu bar icons

The Bluetooth menu bar icon in the upper-right of your display gives you information about the status of Bluetooth and connected devices:

Bluetooth is on, but there are no devices connected to your Mac. If you expect a wireless device to be connected, make sure it's turned on.

Bluetooth is on and at least one wireless device is connected.

At least one wireless device has a low battery. Click the Bluetooth icon to identify the affected device, then replace its batteries.

Bluetooth is off. Click the Bluetooth icon using a wired mouse or trackpad or the built-in trackpad on your Mac notebook and select Turn Bluetooth On.
Mac computers without built-in trackpads won’t allow Bluetooth to be turned off unless a USB mouse is connected.

Bluetooth is offline and unavailable. Restart your Mac. If the Bluetooth status doesn’t change, disconnect all USB devices and restart your Mac again. If Bluetooth continues to show as unavailable, you might need to get your Mac serviced.

Pair your Mac with a Bluetooth device

Bluetooth wireless devices are associated with your computer through a process called pairing. After you pair a device, your Mac automatically connects to it anytime it's in range.

If your Mac came with a wireless keyboard, mouse, or trackpad, they were pre-paired at the factory. Turn on the devices and your Mac should automatically connect to them when your computer starts up.

If you purchased your Apple wireless devices separately, learn how to pair them with your Mac.

After you pair a Bluetooth device with your Mac, you should see it listed in Bluetooth preferences:

Remove a Bluetooth device from your Mac

If you want to remove (unpair) a Bluetooth device from your Mac's device list, follow these steps:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Bluetooth.
Hover the pointer over the device you want to remove, then click the button that appears next to the device's name.

After you remove a Bluetooth device, you'll have to repeat the pairing process if you want to use it again.

Connect to Bluetooth devices after wake or startup

Bluetooth devices are usually available a few moments after your Mac completes its startup process. After waking from sleep, your Mac should find Apple wireless devices right away. Other wireless devices can take up to 5 seconds to be recognized. You might need to click a button on your wireless mouse to wake it up.

Some Bluetooth devices, such as audio headsets, might disconnect to conserve the device's battery power after no audio or data is present for a certain amount of time. When this happens, you might need to push a button on the device to make it active again. Check the documentation that came with your device for more information.

Wake your computer with Bluetooth devices

You can click your paired Bluetooth mouse or press a key on your paired Bluetooth keyboard to wake your Mac. You might need to press the space bar on the keyboard.

If clicking the mouse or pressing a key doesn't wake the computer, you might need to allow wireless devices to wake up your computer:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Bluetooth.
Click Advanced.
Select the checkbox next to Allow Bluetooth Devices to wake this computer.

Connect multiple Bluetooth devices to one computer

The official Bluetooth specifications say seven is the maximum number of Bluetooth devices that can be connected to your Mac at once.

However, three to four devices is a practical limit, depending on the types of devices used. Some devices require more Bluetooth data, so they're more demanding than other devices.t perform reliably, try turning off devices you aren't using or unpair them from your Mac.

Fix interference from other household devices

Bluetooth shares the 2.4 GHz ISM band with other household devices such as cordless telephones, wireless networks, baby monitors, and microwave ovens. If you see issues with your Bluetooth devices that you suspect might be due to frequency congestion, see AirPort and Bluetooth: Potential sources of wireless interference for further information.

Press startup keys on a Bluetooth keyboard

You can press keys immediately after startup to have your Mac perform functions like selecting a startup disk, using the recovery partition, or resetting NVRAM.

Learn more at Startup key combinations for Mac.

Because Apple provides high-level managers and abstractions that transparently perform Bluetooth connection–oriented tasks for many types of applications, you may never need to use the API this chapter describes. There are some exceptions to this, however, such as:

An application that must display Bluetooth-specific error messages to provide a more informative and responsive user experience
An application that vends a new service
An application that implements a new profile

In these applications, you will need to use the API the Bluetooth frameworks provide. To prepare a foundation for the discussion of the API, this chapter first describes the OS X implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack. Then, it describes the various objects, methods, and functions available in the Bluetooth frameworks. For application-design considerations and outlines of how to use the Bluetooth API to perform specific tasks, see Developing Bluetooth Applications.

The OS X Bluetooth Protocol Stack

The foundation of OS X Bluetooth support is Apple’s implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack. For reference, the Bluetooth protocol stack, as defined by the Bluetooth SIG, is described in The Bluetooth Protocol Stack. Figure 2-1 shows the Bluetooth protocol stack that’s built into OS X version 10.2 and later.

The OS X implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack includes both in-kernel and user-level portions. Figure 2-1 shows the layers of the stack that exist in the kernel and the corresponding user-level layers an application can access.

The Bluetooth module at the bottom of the stack is the hardware component that implements the Bluetooth radio, baseband, and link manager protocols. Neither an application nor even the host has access to this layer of the stack.

As described in The Bluetooth Protocol Stack, the HCI layer transmits data and commands from the layers above to the Bluetooth module below. Conversely, the HCI layer receives events from the Bluetooth module and transmits them to the upper layers.

To implement the functions of the HCI layer

Mac Os X Bluetooth Driver