UPDATE: YOUBO Wifi/Bluetooth Adapter and USB Port Configuration
Since moving to a new apartment, I’ve had pretty slow Internet speeds over my Ethernet Powerline adapters. Because of this issue and the prospect of enabling Continuity features on my computer, I decided to get a PCIe Wifi/Bluetooth adapter. I opted for
YOUBO BCM94360CD 802.11a/g/n/ac BT4.0 PCIe Network Adapter because based it seemed like people have fewer issues with it than other adapters (or so I thought).
Installation
I installed the adapter in the top PCIe x1 slot, right above my graphics card. It was a bit of a tight fit because of the shape of the backplate, but if I had put it in the slot below my graphics card, it would have blocked one of the fans on the GFX card. Because the USB cable was so short, I had to wrap it around my GFX card to connect it to the USB2 header, so I may get a longer cable in the future so that I can route it through the cable management panel in my case.
macOS
“It just works out of the box,” they said.
OK, so technically WiFi and Bluetooth did work out of the box, and I could get the full internet speed that I pay for (200 Mbps).
However, no Continuity features worked at first. I tried to restart all of my devices, but Continuity still didn’t work. Then, I logged out of iCloud on my computer and logged back in, and that did the trick.
Confirmed working
Continuity features:
- Airdrop
- Handoff
- Auto Unlock with Apple Watch
- Universal Clipboard
- Continuity Camera
- Continuity Sketch
- Continuity Markup
- Apple Pay with iPhone or Apple Watch
- Instant Hotspot (technically working but speed is very slow because I have poor 4G reception in my apartment)
- Text Message Forwarding (this has always sort of worked with my old USB Bluetooth receiver, but I still need to fix iMessage)
Untested:
- iPhone Cellular Calls (I don’t have a mic or camera to test this)
Not working:
- Sidecar (requires Skylake or newer CPU with iGPU enabled)
System Information - Wi-Fi:
System Information - Bluetooth:
Fixing My Sleep/Wake/KP Issue
About a day after installing the YOUBO adapter, I discovered that I could not put my computer into sleep mode without it immediately waking up. I also noticed that my computer would have a kernel panic shortly after the time I had set it to wake up in the morning in the Energy Saver Schedule. After doing a little research, I learned that this issue is caused by the Bluetooth adapter that’s connected to the USB2 header, and I needed to configure my USB ports and set the Connector for the Bluetooth adapter’s USB port to “Internal” to fix it.
I tried following
The New Beginner's Guide to USB Port Configuration, but I had a lot of trouble with it. I want to give a huge “thanks” to
@UtterDisbelief for helping me sort through my issues. It turned out that there were 3 extra steps I had to complete to get it to get my USB ports to show up correctly in Hackintool:
- Add EHC1, EHC2, and XHC_ rename patches to the ACPI section of my config.plist (see step 3 of this guide for instructions)
- Delete FakePCIID.kext and FakePCIID_XHCIMux.kext from EFI/Clover/Kexts/Other
- I used FakePCIID_XHCIMux.kext to re-enable USB3 ports that had stopped working way back when I updated to High Sierra. This is unnecessary if USB ports are configured with USBPorts.kext and prevents USB ports to show up correctly in Hackintool.
- Delete FakePCIID.kext and FakePCIID_XHCIMux.kext from Library/Extensionsand rebuild my kext caches
- I had no idea I still had any kexts here. My best guess is that I had originally installed these with Multibeast and forgot to remove them when I started putting all of my kexts in EFI/Clover/Kexts/Other.
After completing those extra steps, I was able to follow the guide to remove unneeded USB ports, set the port for my Bluetooth adapter to “Internal”, and create a custom USBPorts.kext with those configurations.
With my USBPorts.kext, all of my USB ports and Bluetooth are working, I can put my computer to sleep without it immediately waking up, and I haven’t observed any more kernel panics!
Windows
“You just have to install the Windows drivers on the CD,” they said.
OK. This issue was a LOT easier to resolve.
I dusted off my external DVD drive and installed the drivers that were on the included CD. However, after installation, I had very slow internet speeds (only 25–35 Mbps when I pay for 200 Mbps).
I did a quick search online for BCM94360CD drivers and downloaded
this one. I followed the instructions to install the WLAN Driver for Windows 7_8_10. After installing the new driver, I could get 200 Mbps!
Wifi Network Issue
A few days after installing the adapter, my computer would sometimes randomly disconnect from my wifi network and not show any networks to connect to. This happened in macOS and Windows, so it appeared to be an issue with the wifi adapter. I tried reseating the adapter, but the problem persisted. I ordered a replacement from Amazon and thankfully haven’t had any issues since installing the replacement.