Over the past few months I've noticed the process bluetoothd taking up to 100% of a CPU core. I normally only have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard connected. With just the mouse and keyboard connected the process periodically (a couple minutes every hour) ramps up from <10% to 100%.
But, when I have a bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and headset connected the bluetoothd process tends to stay 90-100% while the headset is connected.
(side problem) Bluetooth sporadically will take a couple minutes to connection or I will have to turn bluetooth off/on to make the initially connection when I log-on for the day.
- Computer: Mid-2012 Macbook 15"
- OS: Catalina (happened in last couple major updates too)
- Keyboard: Microsoft Mobile Keyboard 6000
- Mouse: Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Mouse Bluetooth
- Headphones: Jabra Evolve 65
^This is with Mouse, Keyboard, and Headset connected but without audio playing
Attempted Fix
I've tried power cycling bluetooth and computer. I've tried resetting the Bluetooth module. I've deleted the .plist.
Any other suggestions? It doesn't make sense that the bluetoothd process use that much resources when it never did a few OS versions ago.
Best Answer
It seems to be quite a complex issue as Apple doesn't comment it/claims it doesn't happen: macOS Catalina blueoothd high CPU IOBluetoothBroadcomSchedulerWorkaround issue