Handoff Not Working Between iPhone and Mac? How to Fix It

Why Handoff stops working

Handoff lets you start an email, a Safari tab or a note on one Apple device and carry on from another. When you find Handoff not working between an iPhone and a Mac, nothing crashes and no error appears. The app icon simply never turns up in the Dock or the app switcher. That silence makes it hard to diagnose, but the cause is nearly always one of a short list of things.

Handoff relies on Bluetooth Low Energy to detect that your devices are close together, and on Wi-Fi and iCloud to pass the activity across. If any one of those is off, or the two devices disagree about who you are, it quietly does nothing.

Handoff not working? Check the basics first

• Both devices are signed in to the same Apple Account, with two-factor authentication on.
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are switched on on both devices. They do not need to share a network, but Wi-Fi must be on.
• The devices are close together, within normal Bluetooth range.
• Both are running a reasonably current version of iOS and macOS. Handoff between very different versions can fail.
• Neither device is in Airplane Mode or Low Power Mode with Bluetooth disabled.

Turn Handoff on, on both devices

Handoff has its own switch on each device, and it is easy to find it off after an update or a restore.

• iPhone: Settings, General, AirPlay & Handoff, then switch Handoff on.
• Mac: System Settings, General, AirDrop & Handoff, then switch on Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices.

If both switches already look on, turn each one off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on. That alone fixes a surprising number of cases because it forces both devices to re-announce themselves.

Reset Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

1. On the iPhone, open Control Centre and switch Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off, wait ten seconds, then switch both back on. Do not rely on the Control Centre toggle alone to fully disconnect Bluetooth, so also check it in Settings, Bluetooth.
2. On the Mac, turn Bluetooth off and on from the menu bar or System Settings.
3. Restart both devices. A restart clears stale Continuity connections that a toggle does not.

Check you are using the same account

A common cause is a second Apple Account on one device, for example a work account on the Mac and a personal one on the iPhone. Open Settings on the iPhone and tap your name at the top, then open System Settings on the Mac and compare the account shown. Both must be identical. If they differ, sign out of the wrong one and sign in with the right one.

Sign out of iCloud as a last resort

If everything above checks out and Handoff is still not working, sign out of iCloud on the Mac, restart it, and sign back in. Make sure your files are synced first, and do not turn off iCloud Drive without understanding what happens to Desktop and Documents. If you only use Handoff for Safari and Mail, you can usually fix it by signing out and back in on whichever device is misbehaving.

How to tell Handoff is actually working

• On the Mac, a Handoff icon appears at the far end of the Dock, next to recent apps.
• On the iPhone, a banner appears at the bottom of the app switcher when the Mac has a Handoff activity.
• Universal Clipboard, which copies on one device and pastes on another, uses the same connection, so it is a quick test.

If those all work, you are done. If Universal Clipboard also fails, the problem is the underlying Bluetooth or iCloud link rather than Handoff itself, and the checks above are still the right place to start.