'Continuity Activation Tool' for Adding Handoff to Older Macs Now Supports Bluetooth 4.0 Dongles

[SkippyThorson]

What's missing is a mention of the 2010 Mac Mini - Unibody with an Optical Drive and HDMI. Huh.

 

[Z400Racer37]

- Yes, definitely. Ebay.
You need a card with part number BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX. See the compatibility table here. I purchased this for my Early 2011 15" MBP, and it works flawlessly with Continuity Activation Tool. For installation instructions on the hardware side of things, have a look at this IFixIt guide. Also see this forum thread for all relevant information on the upgrade. The work done by UncleSchnitty, doktordok and others is nothing short of extraordinary!

Thanks a lot man!

 

[powers74]

Boom! Winning!

 

[elieharriett]

Which Airport card do I need for a Pro?

Okay, I feel like a total fool for having to ask for help with this, but, here I am.

I have an early 2009 Mac Pro and I have always had it hard wired to an Ethernet connection. Never needed wifi, so I never got a card. But Handoff is kind of important to me to get. I need a little clarification: do I need to add both an Airport card AND a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle? If only one, do you recommend one over the other? If both, can you please specify which Airport card I need to get as I have never bought one before? Same with a dongle. Never bought one of those either.

Thanks. And sorry again for the foolish questions.

 

[Adam1988]

Will this enable the working method for Bluetooth on "Airdrop"? From iOs8. To Yosemite to transfer pictures on iMacs year 2010?

Please i want my imac to transfer to my iphone with no wires just by airdrop i hope im explaining myself...

Thanks guys!

 

[JTToft]

Thanks a lot man!

- You're extremely welcome!
Feel free to send me a PM if you need further advice.

 

[AdminB]

Worked for my Early 2011 17" MBP

Bought the ASUS BT-400 dongle on Amazon.com and used the CAT tool. Followed the instructions verbatim but didn't seem to work. Impatiently I turned off Hand-off on my MBP (System Preferences > General > Allow Handoff...), rebooted, turned hand-off back on, and then it started working. Not sure if that was necessary but that's what I did and now all good. Seems like a subtle but decent productivity improvement.

 

[lshaner]

On my Mac Pro 2010 (Westmere), I have a bunch of 3rd-party PCI cards installed and one of them must have a driver bug which causes "ioreg -l" to bail with the following error:

ioreg: error: can't obtain properties.

That message was filling up the Continuity Activation Tool display, but worse than that, it was breaking the check for the installed Bluetooth module version and that was blocking the normal usage of the tool to enable Continuity.

Through a process of trial and error, I determined that "ioreg -l" was bombing only after recurring deeper than 14 levels in the device tree. Rather than digging into all the places that contitool.sh calls ioreg (and reverse engineering exactly how many levels of recursion each call needs), I simply changed the ioreg call to globally limit the output to 14 levels of recursion.

That fixed it.

Here is the one line change that I made in contitool.sh:

59:ioregPath="/usr/sbin/ioreg -d 14"

 

[NYRob94]

Apple likely limited the hardware models because of BT antenna design, performance, range limitations, or other limitation which could not be corrected via a BT firmware update. There is no conspiracy here.

Apple rolls out minor features to work out the bugs before releasing a major new feature/category. For example, Passbook and TouchID resulted in ApplePay. I am sure Apple has bigger plans for Handoff.

When Apple incorporates BT4.2 support, which supports TCP/IP over BT, once a device is paired using one's iCloud creds, Handoff will work w/o WiFi. This will eventually lead to more features between an iPhone and AppleWatch, including a true Dick Tracy watch with video calls.


https://www.macrumors.com/2014/12/03/bluetooth-4-2/

I brought the IOGear GBU521 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GFX0PY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and connected it to my late 2009 iMac. I then downloaded the Bluetooth Explorer from the Apple Dev Website and set the Dongle to be my BT reader. The dongle is working yet I opened the continuity tool and am waiting for it to find the Dongle. It keeps going from "bash" to "head." What am I doing wrong? This was the first dongle listed that it says the continuity tool works with.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[dokterdok]

I brought the IOGear GBU521 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007GFX0PY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and connected it to my late 2009 iMac. I then downloaded the Bluetooth Explorer from the Apple Dev Website and set the Dongle to be my BT reader. The dongle is working yet I opened the continuity tool and am waiting for it to find the Dongle. It keeps going from "bash" to "head." What am I doing wrong? This was the first dongle listed that it says the continuity tool works with.

Thanks,
Rob

When you see that prompt, have you tried unplugging your dongle and plugging it back in? This fixes it most of the time.

 

[prevoid]

Macbook pro mid 2010 13 inch

If I understand it correctly. The tool will nog work on a macbook pro mid 2010 13 inch? Even when I have a dongle?

 

[NYRob94]

When you see that prompt, have you tried unplugging your dongle and plugging it back in? This fixes it most of the time.

I have tried that. Didn't work. Do it matter that I have OS X Yosemite Public Beta 10.10.2 installed on my iMac?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[dokterdok]

I have tried that. Didn't work. Do it matter that I have OS X Yosemite Public Beta 10.10.2 installed on my iMac?

Thanks,
Rob

No it's supposed to detect it on the beta as well.
As a workaround, you can try to force the activation. This will skip the dongle detection and other compatibility checks but all the patches will still be applied. To do that:

1. Get CAT 2.0.1 beta from https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/tree/beta
2. Download and unzip the app on your desktop
3. Open Terminal
4. Type
sudo "$HOME/Desktop/Continuity Activation Tool.app/Contents/Resources/contitool.sh" -f

Before you activate, could you please also do this, which will help me identify the cause of the issue:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type
nvram -p
3. Copy the output and send it to me via PM.

 

[NYRob94]

No it's supposed to detect it on the beta as well.
As a workaround, you can try to force the activation. This will skip the dongle detection and other compatibility checks but all the patches will still be applied. To do that:

1. Get CAT 2.0.1 beta from https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/tree/beta
2. Download and unzip the app on your desktop
3. Open Terminal
4. Type
sudo "$HOME/Desktop/Continuity Activation Tool.app/Contents/Resources/contitool.sh" -f

Before you activate, could you please also do this, which will help me identify the cause of the issue:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type
nvram -p
3. Copy the output and send it to me via PM.

It says command not found.

 

[NYRob94]

It says command not found.

UPDATE....I was able to get it to work on my 2010 Macbook Pro so there is something wrong with my late 2009 27inch iMac. Just wish I could figure this out!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Rob

 

[dokterdok]

It says command not found.

The app needs to be on the desktop. Make sure you copy/paste this command:

sudo "$HOME/Desktop/Continuity Activation Tool.app/Contents/Resources/contitool.sh" -f

 

[atomic76]

The app needs to be on the desktop. Make sure you copy/paste this command:

sudo "$HOME/Desktop/Continuity Activation Tool.app/Contents/Resources/contitool.sh" -f

Hello, Same for me.
The application is on my desktop and I have the command not found in the terminal

iMac late 2009
Asus BT400

Any idea? Thanks

Edit: tried to click and open the beta app you mentioned earlier and got the message " “Continuity Activation Tool” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash." That might be one of the reason it's not working.

 

[dokterdok]

Hello, Same for me.
The application is on my desktop and I have the command not found in the terminal

iMac late 2009
Asus BT400

Any idea? Thanks

Can you please confirm if you have any accessories paired? Dongles might not be detected if accessories and paired. You can try this:

1. Get CAT 2.0.1 beta here https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/tree/beta
2. Turn off bluetooth on the top bar or from the system preferences Bluetooth menu
3. Launch CAT and activate
4. Unplug and replug the dongle when/if the prompt is displayed
5. Reactivate Bluetooth after the activation

CAT 2.0.1 beta contains dongle detection improvements.

 

[atomic76]

Can you please confirm if you have any accessories paired? Dongles might not be detected if accessories and paired. You can try this:

1. Get CAT 2.0.1 beta here https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool/tree/beta
2. Turn off bluetooth on the top bar or from the system preferences Bluetooth menu
3. Launch CAT and activate
4. Unplug and replug the dongle when/if the prompt is displayed
5. Reactivate Bluetooth after the activation

CAT 2.0.1 beta contains dongle detection improvements.

Thank you!
Looks like cutting the bluetooth helped detect my dongle.
Unfortunately the process was not completed after my Wi-Fi card is not the right on. Does this mean this will never work for me?

Thank you for your help!

 

[roadbloc]

So glad that there are developers out there willing to provide workarounds for Apple's planned obsolescence. Shame on you Apple once again for this (and all the rest) artificial limitation.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Continuity seems like a *HUGE* Personal Security risk to me.
What's to stop devices you don't own from receiving calls and messages and other private communications intended for you.

It's really strange that this feature is so celebrated.

It's not a customer benefitting feature at all but a really easy way to surveil.

You'd see it in movies all the time, when the bad guys clones someone's phone and theirs rings when his rings. They pick up and hear the entire conversation unbeknownst to the phone owner.

This seems to enable that.

Because it requires the Mac and the phone to be signed in with the same Apple ID.

 

[atomic76]

Small update, I force the installation. It looks like the bluetooth was/is detected and co but still no luck to see handoff in the Preference system.

Any ideas? ( I did restart the iMac)

Thank you!
Looks like cutting the bluetooth helped detect my dongle.
Unfortunately the process was not completed after my Wi-Fi card is not the right on. Does this mean this will never work for me?

Thank you for your help!

 

[benji888]

What's missing is a mention of the 2010 Mac Mini - Unibody with an Optical Drive and HDMI. Huh.

It's a timeline type of graph...2009 Mac Mini has a blue line all the way to 2011 Mac Mini, so, anything inbetween see the blue note. I have a mid 2010 MBP 13, so, same for me. ...I just placed an order for amazon thinking I forgot something, and the BT4 USB dongle was it I'll have to get it later, but, I have seen a post elsewhere where a 2010 MBP owner got it all working with a dongle.

• Anyone here w/mid 2010 MBP 13" get just a dongle and get it all to work?

 

[2010mini]

Ok this is not working for me.

As per the CAT instructions. I bought the Asus bt400 USB dongle for my 2010 Mini. But the dongle doesn't seem to install when i plug it in.

I could not find any Mac drivers for this USB dongle. anyone out there can help me solve this?

Thanks.

 

[dokterdok]

Ok this is not working for me.

As per the CAT instructions. I bought the Asus bt400 USB dongle for my 2010 Mini. But the dongle doesn't seem to install when i plug it in.

I could not find any Mac drivers for this USB dongle. anyone out there can help me solve this?

Thanks.

Hello
In some cases the dongle is not detected by CAT 2, this is a known issue. I described a workaround here (GitHub.com), you can give it a try.