After reading Gummibando's suggestion in the comments I resetted the bluetooth module on the MacBook Pro via:
Hold Shift-Option while clicking on the BT menu bar item > Debug menu > Reset the Bluetooth module
This solved it for me.
Answer from Christian on Stack ExchangeI can't connect my Bose QuietComfort35 to my MacBook Pro
When my Mac is searching for bluetooth devices my headphones don't seem to come up.
I can of course plug a cable from my headphones to my Mac and then it'll work perfectly fine, but I would like to connect through bluetooth!
I did this and it worked for me
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Forget every bluetooth connection on your Mac.
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Erase bluetooth list on your QC35 (slide the power button to the right and hold until the voice prompt tells you that the list has been deleted)
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Switch off your Mac's bluetooth, switch off your QC35s.
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Switch on your Mac's bluetooth FIRST, then switch on your QC35.
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Pair them
It worked for me not sure about you. But fingers crossed!
Faced somethung similar on my ipad mini 3days ago. The ipad was showing the headphones but whenever i pressed on "pair" the ipad told me that the device was out of range of not turned on.
So i changed the name of the headphones in the connect app and guess what? The ipad showed the new name but was stil telling the device is out of range...
So i had to reset all network settings on the ipad. Rebooted it et voila it was pairing flawlessly.
Videos
If your Bose QC35 headphones are simultaneously connected to your MacBook and iPhone, then whichever device is sending an audio signal through to them will be heard in the headphones.
Now, pausing iTunes on your MacBook only pauses iTunes, it isn't going to pause any other audio - so if your headphones are connected at the time then any other audio will still be heard on your headphones, not on your internal MacBook speakers.
If what you want is for sound effects to not play through your headphones, then you can configure your Sound preferences (System Preferences > Sound) so that sound effects play through your internal speakers, even when your headphones are connected via Bluetooth.
Hope this helps, but if I've misunderstood your problem, perhaps you could clarify your question.
Reset and pair again
Another option you could try is to full reset your bluetooth device list and start again. To do this:
- Slide the power switch to the Bluetooth symbol and hold it there
- After about 10 seconds you should hear "Bluetooth device list cleared"
- Now delete your headphones from the Bluetooth list on your MacBook and iPhone
- Pair your headphones again, but only to your MacBook
- Use your headphones with your MacBook for long enough to feel your issue is resolved
- When satisfied, pair your headphone to your iPhone
- Test to see if the behaviour is now what you expect between both devices
NOTE: I have always found that there are random issues like you're experiencing when multiple devices are simultaneously connected to Bluetooth headphones. For me, I no longer do this - but hopefully you have more success.
Bose Support
It may be worth you checking with Bose Support. I remember reading somewhere that these headphones can have their firmware updated - so perhaps Bose could shed some light on the issue you're having or whether or not there is an update available.
I ran into this issue today and what did the trick for me at least on the 2015 Macbook Pro is holding shift + option and clicking on the bluetooth icon on in the menubar. After that point ot debug and than click on reset bluetooth module. I had the bluetooth turned off on the back and my headphones turned off as well when I did it. Presumebly it should work when the mac bluetooth module is online but I took the safe route. I reconnected my headphones to my iphone and than back to my Macbook and the seemless sound work again. I am guessing the bluetooth module is running into some error code and it just descides to hog the headphones for ever. Hopefully this is helpful for you stevhc!
UPDATE: I no longer experience these issues so it was likely fixed by a previous update. Open the "Bose Connect" app on your phone and make sure your firmware is up to date.
When experiencing issues on Mac, open the "Bose Connect" app on your iPhone and connect to your headphones from there (if not already connected).
The app correctly configures the headphones and eliminates all sound issues.
The sound quality of the Bose QC35 when connected to mac depends on the used audio codec. Sadly, mac computers tend to switch to the low-quality SCO codec when a Bluetooth headset is also used as "input device" (microphone).
Active codec can be shown by by ⌥-clicking the Bluetooth icon in the macOS Menu Bar.
Current best practice is to set the Internal Microphone of your mac as Input Device, and keep the Bose QC35 only selected as Output Device. Input and Output devices can be selected in System Settings > Sound or by ⌥-clicking the Volume icon in the macOS Menu Bar, and selecting devices there.
When the Bose QC35 is not used as an Input Device, mac audio playback can leverage the higher quality AAC codec:
I'm not sure how practical this is (I haven't had the chance to measure CPU usage, etc.), but the below AppleScript will do the job—just replace [YOUR HEADPHONES' NAME] with the actual name of your headphones. This is a modified version of a script from an Apple Support Communities thread.
Save the script below as an application, run it, and add it to your startup items—it should run continuously in the background.
repeat
set statusOld to checkStatus()
set statusNew to checkStatus()
repeat while statusOld is equal to statusNew
delay 5 --for 5 second checks
set statusNew to checkStatus()
end repeat
if statusNew is true then
tell application "System Preferences" to activate
tell application "System Preferences"
reveal anchor "input" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell
delay 0.5
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Internal Microphone")
end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit
else
-- Nothing needs to happen, the device was removed
end if
end repeat
on checkStatus()
set bluetoothDeviceName to "[YOUR HEADPHONES' NAME]"
set myString to do shell script "system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType"
--initial check if it's not even there
if myString does not contain bluetoothDeviceName then
return false
else
--find out if connected/disconnected
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "name:"
set myList to the text items of myString --each item of mylist is now one of the devices
set numberOfDevices to count of myList
set counter to 1
repeat numberOfDevices times --loop through each devices checking for Connected string
if item counter of myList contains bluetoothDeviceName then
if item counter of myList contains "Connected: Yes" then
return true
else if item counter of myList contains "Connected: No" then
return false
else
display dialog "Something went wrong with the script" --this shouldn't happen
end if
end if
set counter to counter + 1
end repeat
end if
end checkStatus
You could play with the time between checks (the line with the comment for 5 second checks) to reduce resource consumption.
There are a number of new APIs (especially in AVFoundation) coming to macOS High Sierra that would allow for a much cleaner solution to this problem. If you're comfortable with Swift or Objective-C (or the Cocoa scripting bridge in AppleScript and JXA), I would look into using those APIs instead of this script once High Sierra is released. In particular, Apple's Audio Session Programming Guide and this Stack Overflow post show some techniques of detecting Bluetooth connections using AVAudioSession.
I still really like @aaplmath's suggestion (and that may be the best one going forward), but I also just stumbled on this solution that requires no coding (AppleScript/Swift/ObjC/Other) in High Sierra, and it's super easy to configure.
Please note that the answer was in the comment section of the article and it seems to work on High Sierra (I'm on 10.13.6), but I don't know if this works on Mojave and beyond.
Open the standard "Audio MIDI Setup.app" utility, and click the + at the bottom to create an Aggregate Device. Then select the Internal Microphone as the only component in this aggregate device and select it as the default input. For some reason this prevents Mac OS X from selecting the Bluetooth Microphone from now on and it will stay on the internal one when you reconnect.
After creating that aggregate input, go to your usual System Preferences -> Sound -> Input (tab)
Source: http://ssrubin.com/posts/fixing-macos-bluetooth-headphone-audio-quality-issues-with-hammerspoon.html#comment-4018174387
Wondering if anyone on here uses this combination also. When I first got the headphones, it was no issue, no discrepancies with names or connections. About a month or so ago my headphones started calling my MacBook “BCM4377B3” instead of the usual “Anon’s MacBook Pro.” I know this isn’t a huge deal I was just wondering if anyone had the same problem and found a fix. Thanks.