Bluetooth ignored by ZwiftApp on mac

Hi, Have been running Zwift on iMac for years using ANT+ dongle as zwift has never recognised the inbuilt bluetooth on my mac. Bought an elite sterzo steering plate - thinking that as it had both ANT+ and BLE connectivity, and I used ANT+ with zwift that it would be just plug and play… NOPE! Anyway, to try and get around the issue of the inbuilt BLE not being recognised by zwift I bought a BLE dongle, set it up as the primary BLE input for the mac and zwift still says bluetooth not on on my device. unistalled zwift and installed again with the BLE dongle alll set up etc… and zwift still says no… so WTF?!

So I guess my questions are:

  1. how do I get the zwiftapp to recognised I do have legit BLE (am running BigSur OS)?
  2. Why on earth is steering not also ANT+ when everything else is???

as a note, I can just unplug and plug in my ANT+ dongle and zwift instantly recognises when it is there or not. My Mac does the same for my BLE dongle, but zwift refuses to recognise it is present.

Does Bluetooth on your Mac work with other Bluetooth devices like headphones or keyboards? Or is it just not working at all? Which model of mac is it? (Check “About This Mac” if you’re not sure)

It has worked with my bluetooth mouse, both internal and now dongle. I’ve never bothered to connect anything else. Zwift has never recognised the bluetooth. It’s a 2010 iMac, which I recently did an upgrade to BigSur to continue using for zwift (all I use it for these days). The dongle recognises anything bluetooth, and is recognised as primary BLE in ‘about this mac’ but zwift does not recognise it either. I can still use ANT+ with zwift so can obviously use my trainer still, just cant use steering. Very frustrating!

That is odd. Which method did you use to install Big Sur? It looks like Apple only supported it up to High Sierra… did you use OpenCore Legacy Patcher and install the root patches afterwards? I wonder if the driver is missing something Zwift expects, but I haven’t seen this problem before. I guess you still have the option to try Monterey, though I have no idea if that would help.

yes, OCLP used and zwift seems to run fine with the install, apart from the BLE issue. Not sure if Monterey would help, but have contacted MrMacintosh to see if any advice can be provided just in case there is something extra I can do.

I just wish zwift would support ANT+ steering, then my problems dissapear and I can go back to just riding and having fun rather than faffing with computers

I can’t help with any troubleshooting, but I’m running Zwift on a 2014 iMac (with Big Sur), and Zwift recognizes the built-in Bluetooth just fine. So, I suspect it’s some sort of driver issue…