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haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
I am on the GM candidate for El Capitan and am now using it for most of the time. This is an upgrade from Yosemite.

Last year, I upgraded my WiFi/BT module to support Handoff. Booting into Yosemite, it works perfectly. It is not working properly under El Capitan on my classic Mac Pro 5,1. MacBook Pro is fine.

The General Settings shows it available. System Report shows as Handoff Support: Yes Outgoing Handoff sometimes works, but mainly we are "no go."

I have disabled iCloud, BT setting, Handoff enablement and rebooted, then restarted the whole thing. No change.

I suspect it is some configuration issue. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to fully reset the system? I really would prefer not to install from scratch...
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
I filed a bug.
Really odd, how outgoing Handoff seems to work. I just opened this page on my MacBook Pro with Command-Tab...
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
I filed a bug.
Really odd, how outgoing Handoff seems to work. I just opened this page on my MacBook Pro with Command-Tab...
I just paired the Mac Pro to the MacBook Pro via the BT panel. Now incoming from MacBook Pro showed up.

Should pairing be necessary?
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
I am on the GM candidate for El Capitan and am now using it for most of the time. This is an upgrade from Yosemite.

Last year, I upgraded my WiFi/BT module to support Handoff. Booting into Yosemite, it works perfectly. It is not working properly under El Capitan on my classic Mac Pro 5,1. MacBook Pro is fine.

The General Settings shows it available. System Report shows as Handoff Support: Yes Outgoing Handoff sometimes works, but mainly we are "no go."

I have disabled iCloud, BT setting, Handoff enablement and rebooted, then restarted the whole thing. No change.

I suspect it is some configuration issue. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to fully reset the system? I really would prefer not to install from scratch...
Just for summary - using BT pairing between all the devices involved seems to have resolved the issue.

It is quite possible that fully resetting the complete network and starting from scratch might resolve it, but this is simpler.
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
Tried resetting BonJour by turning everything off - my 4 iOS devices, my 3 Airport Express and one TimeCapsule, two AppleTVs, 6 computers. Quite and effort.
Powered everything back on starting with the TimeCapsule. Still not working. Outgoing Handoff his there, no incoming.
Got a logging request from Apple, but one of the provisions needed was missing. Hopefully will get that and we can get to the next phase.
The good news is that one of their engineers is looking at this!
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
Wow, spent about a couple of hours of logging runs for Apple Engineering with debug log provisions.
The first with a set that was missing a bluetooth logging profile for iOS worked as expected with a lot of failures on Mac Pro. I then paired the iPhone and had a couple of connections followed by failures.

Then I noticed I had received the missing provision today. After first thinking of punting it to tomorrow I decided to try and start over.

And it all started working flawlessly! I have no idea, how the added BT logging profile on the iPhone would make a difference, unless it change the BT state of the Mac Pro. I was also correlating with my Mac Pro looking at behavior at all three. Very puzzling. The iPhone and MacBook Pro always worked properly.

I removed the debugging profiles and for now, Handoff is still working on the Mac Pro. After the removal, the iPhone pairing was gone and I re-paired. But I will not be surprised, if tomorrow this is broken again.

In that case I need to find out how to completely reset the BT configuration perhaps booting on another partition. I think that is where the problems lie...
 

zaquinho17

macrumors regular
Jul 16, 2015
229
53
Sydney | to | New Jersey
I am experiencing the same issue. my MBA (2015) and iPhone 6s plus just wont work with handoff..

everything else like calling and FaceTime, messages and other icloud stuff all work great

but no handoff

been on the phone with apple all week doing the logs as well, seems like nothing will help me
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
I bit the bullet and reset iCloud on all devices. Logged out everywhere (4 Mac, 2 iPad, 2 iPhones, 2 Apple TVs, 4 Airports) and then shut down. I then started up the AirPort TimeCapsule followed by the Mac Pro after SMC reset and a symbolic tripe NVRAM salute. Then followed with all the other devices.

A solid two hours of PITA activities with no results except that now it will take 2-3 days for email and Photos albums to be back in sync adding a healthy dose to my network CAP.

Don't go there, it does not help.
 

Nepomucene

macrumors newbie
Oct 1, 2015
2
0
Don't go there, it does not help.
Hi Haralds,

Did you manage to find a solution to this?

I have the same problem. Handoff/Instant Hotspot was perfect with Yosemite, but nothing since El Capitan on my iMac

Gear:
iPhone 6 and iPad Mini (1st Gen) on iOs 9.1
iWatch on WatchOs 2.0.1
iMac (2011 model with apple / broadcom BCM94360CD to have Wifi AC & Bluetooth 4.0) & Macbook Air (2015) on 10.11.1

handoff / instant hotspot works with all but the iMac (perfect on MBA)
handoff / instant hotspot worked on iMac with Yosemite

System Informations says my iMac is compatible with handoff:
Screen Shot 2015-10-22 at 11.15.31.png
Handoff is enabled in System preferences:
Screen Shot 2015-10-22 at 11.15.46.png
iCloud is on:
Screen Shot 2015-10-22 at 11.16.07.png

Note that I already did all the usual raindance (Sign out/in of iCloud, bluetooth off/on, wifi Off/on, PRAM)...
I even did a complete reinstall yesterday when 10.11.1 arrived

Does anyone have an idea?
 

haralds

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
2,961
1,240
Silicon Valley, CA
Hi Haralds,

Did you manage to find a solution to this?

I have the same problem. Handoff/Instant Hotspot was perfect with Yosemite, but nothing since El Capitan on my iMac

Gear:
iPhone 6 and iPad Mini (1st Gen) on iOs 9.1
iWatch on WatchOs 2.0.1
iMac (2011 model with apple / broadcom BCM94360CD to have Wifi AC & Bluetooth 4.0) & Macbook Air (2015) on 10.11.1

handoff / instant hotspot works with all but the iMac (perfect on MBA)
handoff / instant hotspot worked on iMac with Yosemite

System Informations says my iMac is compatible with handoff:
View attachment 594763
Handoff is enabled in System preferences:
View attachment 594764
iCloud is on:
View attachment 594765

Note that I already did all the usual raindance (Sign out/in of iCloud, bluetooth off/on, wifi Off/on, PRAM)...
I even did a complete reinstall yesterday when 10.11.1 arrived

Does anyone have an idea?
This is clearly an Apple bug. 10.11.1 does not fix it. I filed a bug report with Apple. There is a very long thread on the Apple support forums about this - many people have this issue. I am sure, they are working on it.
We just have to have patience.

I should note that based on the Apple forums, it is not devices specific. Folks have it in upgraded Mac Pros, MacBook Pros, iMacs etc.
 

coolmaster

macrumors newbie
Oct 25, 2013
15
1
Hi Haralds,

Did you manage to find a solution to this?

I have the same problem. Handoff/Instant Hotspot was perfect with Yosemite, but nothing since El Capitan on my iMac

Gear:
iPhone 6 and iPad Mini (1st Gen) on iOs 9.1
iWatch on WatchOs 2.0.1
iMac (2011 model with apple / broadcom BCM94360CD to have Wifi AC & Bluetooth 4.0) & Macbook Air (2015) on 10.11.1

handoff / instant hotspot works with all but the iMac (perfect on MBA)
handoff / instant hotspot worked on iMac with Yosemite

System Informations says my iMac is compatible with handoff:
View attachment 594763
Handoff is enabled in System preferences:
View attachment 594764
iCloud is on:
View attachment 594765

Note that I already did all the usual raindance (Sign out/in of iCloud, bluetooth off/on, wifi Off/on, PRAM)...
I even did a complete reinstall yesterday when 10.11.1 arrived

Does anyone have an idea?
I have the same iMac, 2011 model with new broadcom card installed internally, and the handoff is not working in 10.11.4 or prior 10.11.x version. Glad to hear I am not alone as I thought it was something wrong with my modified hardware. Bluetooth function normally and only handoff does not work. The same iPhone will work with mac mini 2014 model. Hope there is a fix to this problem.
 

bookemdano

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2011
1,514
846
Yeah I just dropped $100 on a new 802.11ac/BT4.0 card kit for my cMP only to see now that it's basically non-functional in El Capitan. Airdrop seems to work perfectly but Instant Hotspot doesn't and neither does Handoff (in either direction). Disappointing to say the least.
 
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woodenbrain

macrumors member
Sep 2, 2009
80
9
This is driving me nuts. Like last poster, I got the kit from OSXWifi and had severe trouble getting AirDrop or Handoff to work on El Capitan. I cleared the kernel cache and magically after reboot Handoff worked but AirDrop still didn't. Then I upgraded to Sierra and now Handoff doesn't work but AirDrop does sort of, sometimes. Tried all the troubleshooting including iCloud raindance and all else and clearing kernel cache again to no avail.

I'm surprised there is apparently no logging mechanism to diagnos this problem. What is the debug provisioning profile mentioned above?
 
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