Handoff with 2011 Mac using El Capitan

Question

I've enabled handoff on Macs (mine is 2011 era) that don't officially support it, but with El Capitan changes, Apple has really tried to put the handcuffs on more tightly so users can't muck with any system files

Specifically, El Capitan enabled System Integrity Protection, which is causing a lot of grief by it's defense in depth addition to restricting many system filesystem locations. Also, you may have noticed that the 0xED app no longer works in El Capitan - you for some reason can't search and edit anymore. Grrrrr....

Is it possible to get handoff (continuity) working for a 2011 Mac that's running El Capitan?

Answer 1

2011 MacBook Pros can support Handoff/Continuity 

 After doing some research for the past few hours there might still be chance for the 2011 macbook pros to get the features that require bluetooth 4.0 / LE

As it turns out the 2011 MacBook Pro can use the same Airport/Bluetooth card as the mid 2012 Macbook pro and its user replaceable so by replacing the 2011 macbook pro Airport/Bluetooth card you should have the ability to use Handoff/continuity

After replacing your bluetooth card with a Bluetooth LE/4 card: Make sure the Bluetooth card is BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX (if it doesn't have the C then its a Bluetooth 2 card which wouldn't work)

And away we go!

1. on your desktop press command+shift+g
2. type: /system/library/extensions/
3. find: IO80211Family.kext in the extensions folder and copy it to your desktop
4. on the new copy, do show package contents > Contents > PlugIns > AirPortBrcm4360.kext > show package contents > Contents > MacOS > open AirPortBrcm4360 with HexFiend
5. Text search Mac- it should be followed by a number

6. type the below code in terminal this will show your board id example early 2011 macbook pro is Mac-94245B3640C91C81

   ioreg -l | grep "board-id" | awk -F\" '{print $4}' ->  94245B3640C91C81 for mine
   

7. replace the first number in your kext with the number u get in terminal

8. save it

9. Restart your Mac and hold Cmd-R to boot in recovery mode

10. Once rebooted, open terminal and type in the following code: csrutil disable

11. Restart your Mac in normal mode

12. go to terminal and paste:

    sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"
    

13. delete the original IO80211Family.kext in system>library>extensions

14. restart
15. your wifi will not be working after restart
16. use kextdrop to install the modified kext
17. restart

18. your wifi should start working again after installing the kext and restarting

19. Restart your Mac in recovery mode again (holding Cmd-R when you reboot)

20. Open terminal and type: csrutil enable

21. Restart your Mac

22. go to system preferences > general and there should be an option to enable handoff

These are the exact steps I performed with OS X El Capitan on a 13 inch early 2011 macbook pro and got handoff working with my iPhone 6 running iOS 9.1

Good luck!