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TL;DR

Preferences set in ~root/Library/Preferences/bluetoothaudiod.plist don't seem to have any effect any more. “Bluetooth Explorer” and defaults(1) commands that messed with these don’t seem to work either. Does anyone know how to go about doing these things in Monterey?


Historically, we pedants and audiophiles on macOS have been able to tweak bluetoothaudiod.plist to our own fancy. We were essentially restricted to setting AAC bitrates, toggling AptX (not AptX HD, mind you), and packet buffer limits and stuff, but it was still something.

The way to go about this in GUI was to use “Bluetooth Explorer”, an Xcode "extra" that is last known to have been distributed with Xcode 11. Of course, one could always use defaults(1) as well.


As GianpaoloPascasi points out in a post below, tweaking BT-audio codecs can sometimes be a necessity.
How does one tweak the stuff that Bluetooth Explorer and bluetoothaudiod.plist managed, in Monterey?

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  • Asking whether things still work usually results in answers which aren't really helpful. Can you edit the question to ask for solutions for the actual problem you want to solve?
    – nohillside
    Nov 23, 2021 at 10:01
  • Sure! Thanks for the heads up! On it
    – mavenor
    Dec 18, 2021 at 9:39
  • Yeah you're right thanks for pointing it out @nohillside 😄. Tried to make it better, cut down on all my rambling
    – mavenor
    Dec 18, 2021 at 9:56
  • The only alternative right now is to downgrade to Big Sur and use BlueTooth Explorer or Terminal Commands. My headphones are SBC codec only and would not stay connected when macOS was trying to connect via AAC. I think more and more Apple wants to push users to their products so they're closing down lanes to tweak and compensate for 3rd party products.
    – cyberfunk
    May 12 at 6:36

1 Answer 1

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I confirm! Bluetooth explorer and the terminal commands (sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod) are not working, giving no errors. I saw that in /Library/Preferences/ there is an empty plist file "com.apple.Bluetooth.plist"...

P.S.

I started searching because i have a brand new pair of Xiaomi Earbuds Basic 2 and they often loss connection, they sound very weird when using their microphone and sometimes the sound playing even "jumps". All of this on a Macbook Pro 13" 2020. I'd like to go back to BigSur and try out the Bluetooth explorer... Obviusly, they work good on my Windows laptop and on my phone.

The worst thing is that a lot of tutorials cover old methods (putting the keyword "Monterey" SUCH WOW) no longer working. Thanks Apple for this st_pid sh_t.

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  • This doesn't seem to answer the question asked. Well, it does in a way, but the question itself is badly written.
    – nohillside
    Nov 23, 2021 at 9:59
  • @nohillside yes, my bad. Anyway this is the only useful post i found on the web. Nov 24, 2021 at 10:04
  • Nah, my bad really 😄 Anyhoo, thanks for making those edits! And thanks @nohillside for approving them Went back and cleaned up my post. Hope it's better now
    – mavenor
    Dec 18, 2021 at 9:58

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