Bluetooth Headsets No Mic

[aidanchandra]

Airpods pro connected
Microphone input detected in system preferences
No input
Google meets detects issue with microphone when it is on airpods pro

[suhrmann]

Can confirm: No microphone with FreeBuds 3 - Also, my sound preferences becomes very laggy when selecting BT audio input

Codec of

• speaker only: AAC
• "headset-mode": SCO

[aidanchandra]

@suhrmann
I have the same exact behavior. I bought an external mini USB microphone for the time being. A very odd issue to be sure.

I'm thinking of getting a reddit thread going. This issue is relatively common. Perhaps tyler n has some insight.

Also, adding to this issue.

The microphone no longer works in Windows when booting through opencore boot picker. I will test just from windows UEFI now

[suhrmann]

No working mic in Windows might be caused by faulty ACPI

[aidanchandra]

I've investigated a little and there seems to be some interaction between Apple ALC and dual-booting. Someone had mentioned that when they boot into windows, hit restart (NOT SHUTDOWN) and then boot into MacOS their mic works, but it breaks when going from MacOS after a shutdown to windows. That hasn't given me any success but it helps inform the way to solve this I guess

[suhrmann]

Maybe this issue is related to troubleshooting of IntelBluetoothFirmware via restart:
https://openintelwireless.github.io/IntelBluetoothFirmware/Troubleshooting.html#identifying-issues

This kernel extension is only a firmware uploader and it is not needed when you directly reboot from other operating systems that natively support your Wi-Fi card's Bluetooth.
[...]
3. Restart your computer without cutting off the mother board's power supply
[...]

• If your Bluetooth can discover devices, then it's an issue with your Kext injection.
• If Bluetooth does not work at all, then it's either a hardware issue (your motherboard leaves your card in a bad state) or a USB mapping issue.

[suhrmann]

Bad news: The issue Bluetooth mic not working #176 of OpenIntelWireless/IntelBluetoothFirmware got label wontfix

[aidanchandra]

@suhrmann Agh that's super annoying. I bought a USB mini microphone from amazon that I'm going to use in the meantime. I read through the thread and it seemed to be a possible issue with either AppleALC or Bluetooth - if we can collect some persuasive/solid evidence that it's Bluetooth there's a possibility they will try to remedy the issue. It's a huge hole in their software that's clearly being experienced by a lot of users.

[aidanchandra]

Just took a half-assed stab at debugging. Here are my notes:

1. Tried looking at logs. There are none being reported. Likely because we are on release and not debug version. Need to swap.
2. Placed all USB injection above all Bluetooth injection. No change in behavior.
3. Swapped Firmware and Regular Kext positions. No change in behavior.

Next steps to take:

1. Replace with debug version of kext - see if logs are printing out.
2. Try their recommended debugging steps to see if kext injection is working as expected. However, I know @suhrmann doesn't even have a windows partition to boot onto, so if the kext works, it's because of proper kext injection, not incidental firmware loading from Windows.

Long long shots:

1. Reddit post
2. Contacting people who've also had the issue and asking them if they have found a solution to it.