Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The big issue for me having my MacBook Pro plugged into Ethernet through the Thunderbolt Display, while also connected to wifi. Didn't realize I was doing this. Once I turned off wifi everything was fine. Or I could have unplugged the Ethernet cable.
 
Love love love this feature. This morning, I was reading a news article on my Mac, but I had to leave to catch my bus. So I swiped the icon on the bottom left of my iPad, loaded the article, and finished reading it while I waited for my bus.
 
I love Handoff and have had very minimal problems with it all things considering. I just wish it didn't dump so much crap into the Console.

/geek
 
This is important and useful: Move to Front Page

This is pretty important and involves your Mac and not just iOS(iOS blog) and should be moved to the Front Page
 
So if I open something like safari or compose a new email on my iPhone 6 then it'll show up in my first gen iPad mini and macbook pro. If I do the same thing on my iPad, then it'll show up on my macbook but not my iPhone 6. So far it's not too big of a deal, but I've tried all the troubleshooting and nothing has fixed this minor issue.
 
Handoff, Air Drop, Pay, Phone calls from/to Mac all working as advertised. No glitches to report.

iMac 14,2 (late 2013) running Yosemite

iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1

iPad 2 running iOS 8.1 only has Bluetooth 2.1 so I know it doesn’t support much of the new stuff. That’s okay with me.
 
How much of a battery drain do you think bluetooth is on a phone? I don't want to leave it on all the time because I don't want to suck on the battery too much.
 
Hi Everyone,
I'm also having problems using the continuity features. I am at University in the UK. We use a network called 'eduroam.' I can't use Handoff or calling from a Mac as it always says that my Mac and iPhone are not connected on the same Wifi network...when they are!
Why is this and how can it be fixed? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
g13

I've had it working on eduroam, but I think the experience will remain sporadic given that your devices do not often connect to the same wireless routers at any given time. Also - and I must stress that this is speculation on my part, given my lack of knowledge of the intricacies of the eduroam system - it seems that eduroam dynamically clusters users to distribute the load on the network. So you could be sitting next to someone else logged into eduroam and not actually be able to see their shared computer, etc. Remember too that eduroam is a cross-university system, which further complicates things.

I wish I had a straight answer for you, but all I can say is that from my own experience on eduroam, the handoff functionality is hit and miss. In my office, I share my ethernet connection via wifi which creates my own little network and handoff works with that. Perhaps something for you to consider?.
 
Bluetooth!????

Ok, most short sighted stupid Apple decision ever made. Why for the love of anything would they use Bluetooth when Wifi is everywhere and forward and backward compatible?

Did not the Notes app sync between devices over any network connection before Handoff was made a thing?

Just another intentional planned obsolesces to make you buy a new Mac.

Siri could have worked on iPhone 4, all the processing was done in the cloud!

My fanboy status has died and I'm trapped in an ecosystem I can't leave. I feel like Tom Cruise on South Park stuck in the closet.

Someone smart should make a slim profile Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter for $10 that solves the problem and beats Apple at their stupid game.
 
I live in the States with a 2012 mac mini and an iphone 6 and I'm in the same boat. I can only handoff one way.

I have one way handoff on one login/account on my mid2011MBA (from iDevice to MBA) but it works perfectly in both directions, including calling, instant hotspot, etc., on a different account. Both have the same iCloud login.

I suggest anyone having problems set up a new account with administrative privileges and see if you can get everything to work with a "fresh" account on your Mac. You can try using the same iCloud login.

Probably over the years on my "main" account I hacked some file for some reason, and now it's unhappy. If this doesn't get sorted eventually I'll probably just move everything over to the new account.

----------

Ok, most short sighted stupid Apple decision ever made. Why for the love of anything would they use Bluetooth when Wifi is everywhere and forward and backward compatible?

Did not the Notes app sync between devices over any network connection before Handoff was made a thing?

Just another intentional planned obsolesces to make you buy a new Mac.

Siri could have worked on iPhone 4, all the processing was done in the cloud!

My fanboy status has died and I'm trapped in an ecosystem I can't leave. I feel like Tom Cruise on South Park stuck in the closet.

Someone smart should make a slim profile Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter for $10 that solves the problem and beats Apple at their stupid game.

Actually Siri is awful at voice recognition on the iPhone4 because it has a junk microphone. They put a better mic in the 4s. That is also, incidentally, around the time that people on iPhones became intelligible to the party on the other end. Never underestimate the ability of apple to use the cheapest possible components, and charge the highest possible premium, if they think they can get away with it.
 
One thing that's not be mentioned is actually connecting your iPhone to your iPad or to your Mac via Bluetooth as if it was a Bluetooth headset. I found all of my handoff issues resolved with this little trick.
 
Step number one - Buy a brand new mac.

Or... take off the tinfoil hat and simply wait for 10.10.1.

This is the reason people wait until at least the first update before upgrading. That's not a slight on Apple - it's simply the way things go in software (and other businesses). "I'd love to release a new version, but there are no bugs for me to fix" said no developer ever. It's a trade-off between having everything perfect, and needing to ship soon. If you wait until it's 100% perfect, you'll never ship.

I deploy OS X for a living, and I've never deployed a 1.0 (10.x.0) version.

So, how about everybody calm the F down and give them a chance to actually fix these glitches? One of the most annoying things I ever run across - more so than the person who bitches and moans about everything to me - is when they just bitch and moan behind my back but never tell me about an issue they've run into and never give me the chance to fix it, provide a workaround, or escalate to the vendor. They just nail themselves up on the cross and refuse to come down. Report it, and make sure they know about it, but then back off and give them a chance to investigate and fix it.
 
Last edited:
I honestly wouldn't bother with any of the elaborate troubleshooting tips, i've tried them all - at best handoff will work for a short time, just like air drop, just like automatic hotspots. Then it wont and you'll be back to resetting PRAM, deleting preferences.

I've come to the conclusion its just a very buggy feature that needs improvements from Apple.

I did a lot of the testing for this article (trying out everything I found on the internet) since I had trouble getting Handoff working and I'm inclined to agree with you there -- restarting, relogging into iCloud, and toggling on/off Handoff work temporarily for me, but it tends to drop out again on and off. Frustrating.

When it works it's awesome, hoping updates will make it more reliable for those of us having issues.
 
I can see why MR decided that the Apple Menu should now be called the "Apple Symbol," but unless something changed radically in Yosemite, displaying the System Report still requires four steps:

Apple Menu
About this Mac
More Info
System Report
 
Ok, most short sighted stupid Apple decision ever made. Why for the love of anything would they use Bluetooth when Wifi is everywhere and forward and backward compatible?
.

I could be wrong, but I think the Bluetooth LE component of handoff exist to keep the power drain to a minimum. Remember a single Bluetooth LE device can last for over year on a single small coin battery. If Apple implemented it correctly then any device waiting for handoff will pull basically no power until the handoff happens. This power saving ability would more than justify the inclusion of Bluetooth LE into the procedure.
 
I can see why MR decided that the Apple Menu should now be called the "Apple Symbol," but unless something changed radically in Yosemite, displaying the System Report still requires four steps:

Apple Menu
About this Mac
More Info
System Report

In Yosemite it's:

Apple Menu
About this Mac
System Report
 
I did a lot of the testing for this article (trying out everything I found on the internet) since I had trouble getting Handoff working and I'm inclined to agree with you there -- restarting, relogging into iCloud, and toggling on/off Handoff work temporarily for me, but it tends to drop out again on and off. Frustrating.

When it works it's awesome, hoping updates will make it more reliable for those of us having issues.

I've come to the conclusion its the way Yosemite handles Bluetooth LE at the moment as iOS to iOS seems very reliable.

In Yosemite the instant Hotspot, Handoff TO the Mac and being able to find the Mac in Airdrop are all very unreliable and flakey. So i'm hoping a Yosemite update will fix this, but you'd expect a bit more from the richest company in the world - so many problems lately.
 
Another magic trick

Here's another magic trick which can help a lot of ppl with Handoff not working.

Turn on UPnP on your router, and restart your router and devices.
Is UPnP already on? turn it off, and then back on, and restart your router and devices.

Thank me later :rolleyes:
 
The other day being on the office Wifi after i just had updated my iPhone5 to iOS 8.1 i noticed the Handoff icon on my MBP next to the Dock. And i played with it a few times. Worked with a noticably lag. I then rebooted both my MBP and my iPhone. Since then it only works with Handoff from OSX Safari to resume on the iPhone.

The direction for handoff from iOS handing over to OSX has completetly stopped working ever since.

Picking up and initiating calls on the Mac works fine though.

Not sure what i could do to fix. I'm thinking about wiping the MBP with a clean install (atm it's an updated state Lion>Mavericks>Yosemite). :(
 
Handoff just randomly started working between my iPhone 6 and 2012 rMBP, about a day after I installed Yosemite. I hope this becomes more reliable as I feel it is currently not something I can depend on working.
 
I was trying everything on my iPhone 6 and late 2013 retina MBP without success until I disabled and re-enabled handoff on both devices, so give that a try.
 
Or... take off the tinfoil hat and simply wait for 10.10.1.

This is the reason people wait until at least the first update before upgrading. That's not a slight on Apple - it's simply the way things go in software (and other businesses). "I'd love to release a new version, but there are no bugs for me to fix" said no developer ever. It's a trade-off between having everything perfect, and needing to ship soon. If you wait until it's 100% perfect, you'll never ship.

I deploy OS X for a living, and I've never deployed a 1.0 (10.x.0) version.

So, how about everybody calm the F down and give them a chance to actually fix these glitches? One of the most annoying things I ever run across - more so than the person who bitches and moans about everything to me - is when they just bitch and moan behind my back but never tell me about an issue they've run into and never give me the chance to fix it, provide a workaround, or escalate to the vendor. They just nail themselves up on the cross and refuse to come down. Report it, and make sure they know about it, but then back off and give them a chance to investigate and fix it.

No, I think he was referring to the fact that it is only the more modern Macs that support Handoff.

Personally I am not surprised that Apple have done this, but whiners will whine that they aren't getting a feature that they didn't have before.
 
I have a late 12 iMac and a 5s which although are officially supported and correctly set to allow hand off, only work mac to iOS for mail and safari. Pages and other apps refuse to work. The situation is even worse from iOS to OS X as only safari will show in the doc.

great feature but needs further work to make it useable.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.