Solve intermittent Bluetooth problems on the Mac Mini
Over the past few months my Mac Mini keeps losing connection to the Bluetooth devices (namely my keyboard and mouse). After a while, it will reconnect, and then eventually lose it again. The duration it loses connection for increases and increases, until eventually it doesn’t pick up the Bluetooth devices at all. I found the only way to make Bluetooth work again was to unplug the Mac Mini from the power at the back and leave it for about an hour.
After some Goggling, I found I wasn’t the only one with this problem, but nobody had come up with a fix yet for the broken Bluetooth. I started leaving a cabled USB mouse plugged in as well as my Bluetooth mouse, so when it happened again I could have a dig around to investigate, and then I discovered that it wasn’t the devices losing connection, it was the Bluetooth hardware itself failing. The status icon by the clock was changing to the Bluetooth logo with a tilde (~) through it, and the status was “Unavailable”.
The thought then occurred to me, with the durations getting longer, and only getting warmer as we head into Summer, that this could be heat related. I downloaded a program called Temperature Monitor which places a temperature gauge up by the clock. I set this to run on start up, and kept going for a few days. I noticed, that the Bluetooth turned off as soon as this was reaching around 53 C ambient temp on the north-bridge. I thought it was a little odd, that a computer would get this hot and I couldn’t hear a fan spinning, and upon investigation, it wasn’t spinning very fast at all!
To cure this, I downloaded a program called smcFanControl with the aim of tweaking the fan settings, and discovered that the fan was set ridiculously low by default. I turned it up from 1500 RPM to 3350 RPM, and immediately the temperature dropped, and the Bluetooth turned back on! Success!
So there you go: to fix the Bluetooth on a Mac Mini from cutting out, download smcFanControl and turn your fan up a bit.
on August 1, 2008 on 10:43 am
Wow, that worked! Thanks for posting this.
on August 1, 2008 on 10:46 am
yeah i havn’t had a problem since doing this, and the weather has only gotten hotter here
on August 7, 2008 on 2:11 pm
Thanks so much — I had no idea this would work. Seems like a good solution.
on August 15, 2008 on 10:11 pm
Hey thanks heaps for this. Problem solved in one hit! Apple should look into this though and perhaps find a hardware work around instead of the consumer getting a software solution.
on August 28, 2008 on 11:37 pm
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on August 29, 2008 on 6:35 pm
Working good so far! Thanks. Someone tell Apple!
on September 22, 2008 on 4:08 pm
Also fixes a problem on my Mac Mini where the wireless connection drops out after the system heats up (over 50C) a few minutes after initial boot. Cheers!
on October 15, 2008 on 3:01 pm
thank’s……. you fix the problem…….
on June 26, 2009 on 9:49 pm
incredibile, appena installato il programmino, ha cominciato a funzionare sia la tastiera che il mouse..
wow it’ s incredibol
congratulation !!!
on September 2, 2009 on 5:18 pm
Trying this out right now, don’t know if it’s working yet. My Mac Mini seems to run at about 61C, which seems very hot to me.
Fan now running at 3650 rpm, temp dropped to 50C after a few minutes, Bluetooth is on again… Let’s see if it stays on!
on October 29, 2009 on 11:52 pm
Ca marche! (It works!)
Merci pour le truc! (Thanks for the trick!)
on December 19, 2009 on 11:58 pm
Thanks for the tip. I’ll try this tonight at home.