Big Sur Breaks Airpods Connecting to Macbook

App & System Services Core OS macOS Mac

Created Oct ’20

Replies 38

Boosts 0

Views 24k

Participants 43

So after updating to Big Sur, my airpods won't connect to my Macbook. It let's me connect but after 5-10 seconds it just disconnects. (No audio can play during this time either). I've tried removing the airpods from my iCloud devices a couple ways but it didn't seem to make a difference. Please help!

Boost

TheBinaryOne OP

Mar ’21

Still have the issue today with BigSur 11.2.3 and air pod pros (replaced by apple). Any fix from apple yet?

MrsKugs OP

Mar ’21

I tried all of the suggestions above (least invasive to most invasive). I tried to remove the suggested plug-ins but there is nothing in the Plug-Ins subfolders (Components, MAS, VST) for me to remove. Anyone have any other ideas to get this bluetooth issue corrected? MBP 2020

MrsKugs OP

Apr ’21

Went back to the drawing board, after trying much of what the commenters suggested here. The simple and most obvious thing I overlooked doing was a PRAM reset. That fixed it for me! Thank goodness! Thought I would share.

sasp OP

Apr ’21

I had an issue with AirPods 2 repeatedly disconnecting from MacBook Pro after 10-15 seconds. However, they were stable with my iPad and iPhone. And AirPods 1 and AirPods Pro were stable with my MacBook. Very strange indeed. I ended up having to re-set my AirPods 2 following the 15 second case button hold described here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209463 and then re-add them to MacBook, and other devices. Once completely reset and re-added they seemed to be holding stable connection once again.

mlbk86 OP

Oct ’21

Bought the Airpods pro yesterday. Works fine with Iphone XR (ios 14.2), but keeps disconnecting from Mac Book Pro (15-inch, 2019, Big Sur 11.6) after a few seconds or immediately if I try to play any sound. Any ideas? I tried everything I found in this thread and also here: https://piunikaweb.com/2021/04/12/macos-big-sur-bluetooth-connectivity-issues-workarounds/ - no luck

oliver_93 OP

Dec ’21

I had issues with my AirPods Pro, the audio shatters while connecting to Mac, they work perfectly on other Apple Devices. Resetting Bluetooth just didn't help, I looked into the Audio Plug-In at /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins, and I noticed there were only three folders:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/MAS
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST

So I "deleted" folder Components by renaming it as Components.old, in case I want to recover that folder in the future. The other two folders MAS and VST were empty, therefore I didn't touch them. AirPods Pro started to work normally after a reboot of the macOS.

I'm using MacBook Pro M1, macOS 12.0.1

sheramaxtar OP

Feb ’22

I solved this problem by #2 solution from this link https://piunikaweb.com/2021/04/12/macos-big-sur-bluetooth-connectivity-issues-workarounds/

But just by resetting the Bluetooth module alone, it doesn't work for me. I had to also click on Factory Reset All Connected Devices and then restart the mac. And now my Airpods 3 worked on my Big Sur Mac!

arshvayu OP

Feb ’22

I tried all the fixes mentioned in other answers such as reset BT module, delete audio plugins in "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins", PRAM reset. None of them worked for me.

What worked for me was deleting following .plist files related to bluetooth as mentioned in this link - https://iphonegeeks.com/bluetooth-not-working-on-mac-big-sur

com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file in /Library/Preferences directory
Files starting with com.apple.Bluetooth in ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost directory

After deleting above files I restarted my MacBook and I was able to connect to Airpods.

Note: Earlier I restored my MacBook using a Time Machine backup, perhaps that caused the issue by causing conflicting bluetooth settings and deleting the plist files fixed it. Not 100% sure, just my guess.