How to restart Bluetooth service from command line

Question

On Linux, if one wishes to restart the Bluetooth service, they simply launch a terminal and issue the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

What is the equivalent on Mac OS X? I would like to restart my Bluetooth without having to restart the entire computer.

I am using Yosemite.

Update: Of the various command line options provided by Testing below the only one that seemed to work was the last, which is this:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport
sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

Update 2: The above command no longer works and I wonder if it ever did. The first time I tried it it might have been something else that restarted my bluetooth services. The only thing that will work for me is a restart of the entire machine every morning.

Answer 1

On High Sierra, none of the command line options worked for me. I was able to plug in a wired USB mouse and use the Shift + Option with Debug/Rest solution.

I tried the blueutil solution on my High Sierra, and it worked like a charm. I regularly have Bluetooth on my 2015 MBPR with an Apple Magic Mouse hose up, and have to restart. Yeah, I could open the lid and use the track pad, but it's on the other side of the wall from my desk space.

You can install blueutil using Homebrew:

brew install blueutil

Or you can compile and install it by hand using:

cd ~/tmp/
git clone https://github.com/toy/blueutil.git
cd blueutil
make
make test 
cp blueutil ~/bin/

Now run:

blueutil -p 0 && sleep 1 && blueutil -p 1

Answer 2

sudo pkill bluetoothd

NOTE: Works for me on macOS High Sierra

My Logitech MX Anywhere mouse does not work after sleeping sometimes. As I've read it's not because of mouse, it's a macOS Smart Bluetooth bug. But my Apple keyboard always works, never has this issue.

Sometimes I wake up my computer, the Apple keyboard is working but the Logitech mouse is not working. So without the mouse I cannot restart Bluetooth from the system (I could close the lid but my keyboard also goes away, so cannot restart it again).

I started to use this command from the terminal, it stops the service but when the service stops it automatically restarts it self. And my mouse starts working within a second!

Answer 3

On El Capitan, it's kind of tricky because it doesn't allow you to unload system services. However, a brute-force method is:
sudo pkill blued
'blued' is the OS X bluetooth daemon, and it will automatically restart when terminated (at least when I tested it on my El Capitan machine). Other related daemons are: com.apple.bluetoothReporter, com.apple.IOBluetoothUSBDFU, and com.apple.bluetoothaudiod (you can look at the daemons running using sudo launchctl list)

You can also try:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.blued
sudo launchctl start com.apple.blued

If you have an older OS X version, it's cleaner:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist

or

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport
sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

Answer 4

One thing to mention is the daemon name blued (at least until macOS 10.11 El Capitan), has been changed to bluetoothd.

So based on the version of the macOS, you need to change the daemon name in the below command(s).

Another thing to note is that, unload then load the daemon's plist(instead of stop then start or sending HUP signal) may not work due to the SIP(System Integrity Protection) introduced in El Capitan. But it should work when you disabled the SIP or on macOS before El Capitan.

$ sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist
$ sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist

Even in the SIP environment(after El Capitan) you can simply launchctl stop then launchctl start the daemon.

$ sudo launchctl stop com.apple.bluetoothd # or blued based on macOS version
$ sudo launchctl start com.apple.bluetoothd

In case you just want the status(on|off) of bluetooth to be changed, not wanting the daemon to actually restart, you can do the following,

# Let bluetooth be on 
$ sudo defaults write 
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth ControllerPowerState -int 1

# let bluetooth be off 
$ sudo defaults write 
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth ControllerPowerState -int 0

# Then reload the daemon
$ sudo killall -HUP bluetoothd # or blued based on macOS version
# On a macOS system which has proctools installed, you can replace `killall` to `pkill`

Blueutil is cool stuff, but it is using some private APIs of IOBluetooth.framework, so it may not work on the future version of macOS.

Answer 5

For my Macbook Pro 2017 with macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, I restart bluetooth using the following bash script:

#!/bin/bash

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.bluetoothd
sudo launchctl start com.apple.bluetoothd

Answer 6

This 3rd party command line tool seems to work all the way up to High Sierra, abstracting away the differences between OSX versions: https://github.com/toy/blueutil

Answer 7

Found this page on GitHub Gist with commands that worked for me (I am running Yosemite v. 10.10.5). You can simply type the following in the terminal to restart the bluetooth daemon without restarting:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport 

bluetooth daemon

Answer 8

I am running Yosemite v10.10.5 and none of the other comments / gists worked for me at all. The only steps that I managed to figure out to take back to life the bluetooth driver was:

1. Execute sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport in the terminal
2. Restart computer without conserving the opened windows

Answer 9

On BigSur you can simply do,

1. Hold down the Shift and Option keys, then click on the Bluetooth icon in the menubar. If its not there then add by going to System Preferences > Bluetooth > Tick Show Bluetooth in menu bar.
2. And then choose Reset the Bluetooth module from the menu.

Answer 10

all the variants mentioned here in this threads is not working properly, obviously series of error in the output.. I just want to put alias in bash_profile for turn off/on bluetooth service easily from terminal Does any help for Applescript variants for it, which I can easliy triggering through bash_profile alias typing just one short alias command like blueon/blueoff ?

MBP:~ applehead$ > system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType Software:

System Software Overview:

  System Version: macOS 10.14.6 (18G9323)
  Kernel Version: Darwin 18.7.0
  Boot Volume: Macintosh HD
  Boot Mode: Normal
  Computer Name:  MBP_appleHead
  User Name: applehead (applehead)
  Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
  System Integrity Protection: Enabled
  Time since boot: 4 days 17:11

Answer 11

My problem is losing Magic Mouse 2 from Macbook Air (Monterey 12.2). Then, I found the CPU usage of bluetoothd is high.

What I have tried is simply kill bluetoothd. And my Magic Mouse 2 reconnected as soon as I killed bluetoothd. It seems bluetoothd will restart automatically.