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Fixing Bluetooth speaker audio delay on macOS

4th of May 2022


I've had my JBL Go 3 speaker for a couple of months and recently I started getting a delay when starting playing music. For example, I'd press "play" on YouTube, the video of course starts playing immediately but the speaker is silent for the first 2-3 seconds.

Usually it's not a big issue but it makes listening to voice messages quite cumbersome because I usually miss the first few words. Another annoying scenario is when I use Duolingo and the audio ends before the speaker starts playing anything. In that case it doesn't catch up and I simply don't get to hear anything.

I decided to describe this problem here because I keep losing the command used for fixing the delay. Without further ado, you simply have to write this in your Terminal and the lag should be gone:

sudo defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" -int 40

Number 40 is responsible for the quality of audio - the higher the better. However some devices may not be compatible with higher values. Feel free to experiment and see what works for you.