VB 5.0.14 disables bluetooth on OSX 10.11.3 host

[esLivingston]

VB 5.0.14 disables bluetooth on an iMac running OSX 10.11.3 thereby preventing the use of the wireless keyboard and trackpad. Hence the loss of control of both host and guest!

The only(?) way out of this is to force a reboot of the system using power switch.

This is not a problem with VB 5.0.10

[Frank Mehnert]

Not enough information. At which point is bluetooth disabled? My guess is that you established a blank USB filter which matches to every USB device and as soon as you start your VM, the bluethooth USB device is passed to the guest and not avilable for the host anymore.

[kai_m_becker]

Same here. The reason is indeed an empty USB filter which "steals" the complete Bluetooth of the (Mac) Host, although it was actively connected to the Host OS. Previous versions of VirtualBox didn't grab already connected devices; neither Bluetooth nor any USB.

Since empty USB filters are very convenient to "catch all" _newly_ connected devices, e.g. memory sticks, test hardware, etc. whose IDs are not known before, it would be nice to return to the previous behaviour, i.e. "don't grab already connected hardware".

[esLivingston]

The same problem exists in the latest release (5.0.16) as tried today.

Apologies for not providing more information sooner.

The bluetooth keyboard and trackpad are disabled during the start-up of a virtual machine.

The comments by both frank and kai_m_backer about the existence of an empty USB filter are correct. I'll try again without one. Thanks for the insight as to what the problem might be.

[esLivingston]

re: presence of a blank USB filter. I still have now one present but disabled in the VM definition. This allows the VM to start-up OK with both bluetooth keyboard and trackpad working. Once the VM is running I can then enable the blank USB filter. This process allows me to run 5.0.16 OK.

It would be good if the blank USB filter behaved as it did in 5.0.10 as kai_m_backer recommends.

[erben.fr]

Hello,
I have almost the same issue on iMac 14,1 (late 2013) and iMac 17,1 (late 2015).
But this bug DOES NOT appear on iMac 11,3 (mid 2010).
The diference between this iMacs is Bluetooth version – the old one has Bluetooth 2.1 and the newer one has 4.0 and 4.1. See attached Bluetooth spec from iMac 14,1 (late 2013).

My symptoms:
I have USB keyboard and Bluetooth mouse, so when I launch any VM –> Bluetooth mouse stop work but when I press Cmd+Q, I can save VM state and quit Virtualbox. In this case Bluetooth mouse became active again several seconds after VirtualBox quit.

Affected Virtualbox versions:
5.0.12 r104815 – is the last working version
5.0.14 – 5.0.20 – is buggy versions

[Frank Mehnert]

erben.fr, to me it seems that your USB mouse / bluetooth mouse (probably also attached via USB) is passed to the guest. Do you have some kind of USB filter active for your VM?

[rsteele]

The current version(5.14) of VB appears to interfere with Bluetooth in a couple of ways. I have a late 2014 Mac Mini with Core I7 CPU running El Cap. The first and most obvious is when when system awakes from sleep mode the BT keyboard doesn't work (mouse and track pad work normally) The keyboard enters random letters into the loggin box usually with multiple letters per key press. The only way to fix this is to remove the batteries from the keyboard, then reinstall them and reconnect. I have tried multiple keyboards and and external BT adapter and it makes no difference. The second problem is that I can't stream music over BT reliably. Sometimes it works fine and sometimes it sounds like the music is at a low bit rate from the bottom of a well with random volume adjustments. I assumed I had a hardware problem and return the Mac to Apple. They could find any problems but reinstalled the OS. At that point everything work perfectly. However as soon as I installed VB things when haywire again. I've given up the BT keyboard. The streaming now mostly works, but when I start up VB it goes back to the 8bit-in-the-well sound for about 10 seconds, then returns to normal.

[Pingumann]

Replying to esLivingston:

VB 5.0.14 disables bluetooth on an iMac running OSX 10.11.3 thereby preventing the use of the wireless keyboard and trackpad. Hence the loss of control of both host and guest!

The only(?) way out of this is to force a reboot of the system using power switch.

This is not a problem with VB 5.0.10

Problem returned with VBox Version 5.2.4 r119785 (Qt5.6.3) and MacOS 10.13.2 (17C88); Pingumann

[Socratis]

@Pingumann
I have a 10.11.6 host running 5.2.4+ and I've never had that problem. Gather all the information requested in "​USB basics and troubleshooting", "​8. Asking for help", ZIP them in a single file and post it here.

Actually it would have been better if such discussions take place it the forums, but here is fine I guess...