MacBook Pro and Bluetooth

I’ve had a problem with the Bluetooth on my MacBook Pro where the menu bar icon is grayed out and it is crossed out and not functioning. Restarts and PRAM resets don’t seem to resolve the issue, but the following steps are pretty painless and fixed things for me:

  1. Close System Preferences and/or any app that was trying to use or configure any Bluetooth device with the Mac
  2. From the OS X Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to summon Go To Folder and enter the following path:  /Library/Preferences/
  3. Locate the file named “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” and delete it
  4. (you may see a com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.lockfile too, if so delete that as well – this is a system folder so you will need to authenticate with an admin user)
  5. Head to the Apple menu and choose “Shut Down” to power down the Mac
  6. Wait a minute or so before booting the Mac again
  7. Head to the Bluetooth menu or System Preference panel to resync your hardware

Thanks to Max108 for posting the fix.

2 thoughts on “MacBook Pro and Bluetooth

  1. Sadly, I’ve found that this problem comes back eventually, but following my tip seems to kick the can down the road for weeks, if not months. I bet installing some piece of software is tripping this off, but I’m not a patient enough detective (yet) to figure it out.

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