If you have a built-in Bluetooth adapter that is no longer working one sure workaround is to buy a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle.įor example, a laptop that the internal Bluetooth has stopped working on, it can be easily be replaced with a Bluetooth USB dongle and have it back up and working quickly. If the address changes, your computer is definitely using the external adapter.Adding Bluetooth to a Windows 10 PC or laptop is easy to do with a small low-cost USB dongle. Now, try to switch to your external adapter, and repeat the above steps. (I usually just pay attention to the last two characters) This is the name of your computer's internal Bluetooth adapter. Note the sequence of letters and numbers after 'Address:'.With the external dongle unplugged, option+click on the Bluetooth icon in your menu bar.

If there's no Bluetooth icon in your menu bar, go to system prefs -> Bluetooth and check 'Show Bluetooth in menu bar'.

With your external Bluetooth adapter unplugged: No reboots or additional software required!Īdditionally, there's a much quicker way to see which bluetooth adapter your mac is currently using. Starting with the external bluetooth dongle unplugged: I've often had the exact same problem! I've found that the following method works consistently to switch to the external adapter. This is now part of a package called 'Hardware IO Tools for Xcode V x.x' and can be found at There's a ton of useful tools to debug interference, pairing issues, and so on. If you want to work around this without rebooting, you can use Bluetooth Explorer from the OS X developer tools. I had to unplug the adapter, plug it back in, and then turn Bluetooth back on. Turning off the adapter works fine, but clicking 'on' turned the internal adapter back on. The on / off button in System Preferences is a little buggy. Especially with a headset, there's much better sound quality. I've found that a BT 4.0 adapter is working better than the built-in adapter in my 2010-era Macbook Pro. You'll know it's working if any existing pairings break. If you hold down the Option key while clicking on the Bluetooth menu icon, the MAC address of the adapter should be different.

The easiest way to use the USB adapter is to reboot. I just went through this using this no-name adapter on OS X 10.10:

Kinivo bluetooth driver not available