M1 Mac mini not waking display after sleep

[leeuk321]

This has just started happening to me on my M1 Mac mini. The curious thing though is that it doesn't seem display related, it just goes into a deep sleep and refuses to wake up in any fashion. I usually tap my CAPS key on my magic keyboard to wake it up, because when the caps key lights up I know that the Mac mini has woken and getting ready to output to the monitor.

However, when it goes into this unwakeable sleep, the caps key doesn't light up. Trackpad doesn't wake it either, and it doesn't matter if I directly connect either the keyboard on the trackpad to the Mac mini. I've got an external drive connected, and I can see that this is sleeping too. I can plug-in or unplug any device, or disconnect or reconnect the HDMI cable (from either or both ends), switch the monitor off...all to no avail. Nothing (*nothing*) wakes it up, as far as I can tell.

The only thing that gets it going again is holding the power button down until it completely turns off, then powering it back up again. And unsurprisingly, if I disconnect the HDMI cable, the keyboard still carries on connecting with the Mac mini.

This is what's confusing me about the sleep issue, is everyone else not able to get any connection with their keyboard, mouse, trackpad etc? Most people comment on the display simply not coming on, and whilst this is a subset of the symptoms of the machine being asleep as a whole, I don't see how it's related. Surely, you should only be thinking about the display if everything else is connecting fine but the display output hasn't "woken up" yet? Or am I missing something.

Case in point: I just put my computer to sleep, unplugged the HDMI cable, hit CAPS a few times until I confirmed that it had connected, entered my password, hit enter, reconnected the HDMI cable and voila - my desktop right there. Surely if there was some symbiotic sleep relationship between the Mac mini and the display, then it should't wake up if the display wasn't connected at all?

 

[pshufd]

This has just started happening to me on my M1 Mac mini. The curious thing though is that it doesn't seem display related, it just goes into a deep sleep and refuses to wake up in any fashion. I usually tap my CAPS key on my magic keyboard to wake it up, because when the caps key lights up I know that the Mac mini has woken and getting ready to output to the monitor.

However, when it goes into this unwakeable sleep, the caps key doesn't light up. Trackpad doesn't wake it either, and it doesn't matter if I directly connect either the keyboard on the trackpad to the Mac mini. I've got an external drive connected, and I can see that this is sleeping too. I can plug-in or unplug any device, or disconnect or reconnect the HDMI cable (from either or both ends), switch the monitor off...all to no avail. Nothing (*nothing*) wakes it up, as far as I can tell.

The only thing that gets it going again is holding the power button down until it completely turns off, then powering it back up again. And unsurprisingly, if I disconnect the HDMI cable, the keyboard still carries on connecting with the Mac mini.

This is what's confusing me about the sleep issue, is everyone else not able to get any connection with their keyboard, mouse, trackpad etc? Most people comment on the display simply not coming on, and whilst this is a subset of the symptoms of the machine being asleep as a whole, I don't see how it's related. Surely, you should only be thinking about the display if everything else is connecting fine but the display output hasn't "woken up" yet? Or am I missing something.

Case in point: I just put my computer to sleep, unplugged the HDMI cable, hit CAPS a few times until I confirmed that it had connected, entered my password, hit enter, reconnected the HDMI cable and voila - my desktop right there. Surely if there was some symbiotic sleep relationship between the Mac mini and the display, then it should't wake up if the display wasn't connected at all?

My mini sleeps but the keyboard light stays on as do my monitor port hubs - so I wonder if the monitor port hubs are keeping the mini in a slightly higher power state. I hit a key on the keyboard and one monitor takes 3-5 seconds to wake up while the other takes 1-3 which I consider fine.

 

[zerozoneice]

i have it hooked up to a Gigabyte M28U with USB-C -> USB-C cable. Unless i set it to never sleep or turn off display, it will eventually sleep or turn off display and only way to get it back is to tap once the Mini power button.

Maybe it's due to the built-in KVM setup (keyboard, mouse, webcam, wireless headphones all plugged in the monitor USBs, not the mini or windows laptop).

 

[pshufd]

This thread prompted me to fix the sleep problem on my Windows desktop (it never sleeps). I use a program which prevents it from sleeping so I disabled it preventing sleep and I'll see how it goes. Exact opposite problem of macOS on the mini.

 

[James Borza]

My M1 (8gb/256) Mac mini doesn't seem to want to wake my displays after its been sleeping. I have tried with 2 different displays with 2 different HDMI cables with the same thing occurring on each one. I am currently only using one at a time. I also noticed some pink squares/graphics glitches on the Big Sur boot/log in screen (with the coloured background, not the black and white boot up)

I am going to leave it with the display set to never sleep for now to see if anything is different after leaving it for a while.

Any one else having similar issues? I don't have a USB-C to HDMI or DisplayPort to try currently.

 

[James Borza]

This has just started happening to me on my M1 Mac mini. The curious thing though is that it doesn't seem display related, it just goes into a deep sleep and refuses to wake up in any fashion. I usually tap my CAPS key on my magic keyboard to wake it up, because when the caps key lights up I know that the Mac mini has woken and getting ready to output to the monitor.

However, when it goes into this unwakeable sleep, the caps key doesn't light up. Trackpad doesn't wake it either, and it doesn't matter if I directly connect either the keyboard on the trackpad to the Mac mini. I've got an external drive connected, and I can see that this is sleeping too. I can plug-in or unplug any device, or disconnect or reconnect the HDMI cable (from either or both ends), switch the monitor off...all to no avail. Nothing (*nothing*) wakes it up, as far as I can tell.

The only thing that gets it going again is holding the power button down until it completely turns off, then powering it back up again. And unsurprisingly, if I disconnect the HDMI cable, the keyboard still carries on connecting with the Mac mini.

This is what's confusing me about the sleep issue, is everyone else not able to get any connection with their keyboard, mouse, trackpad etc? Most people comment on the display simply not coming on, and whilst this is a subset of the symptoms of the machine being asleep as a whole, I don't see how it's related. Surely, you should only be thinking about the display if everything else is connecting fine but the display output hasn't "woken up" yet? Or am I missing something.

Case in point: I just put my computer to sleep, unplugged the HDMI cable, hit CAPS a few times until I confirmed that it had connected, entered my password, hit enter, reconnected the HDMI cable and voila - my desktop right there. Surely if there was some symbiotic sleep relationship between the Mac mini and the display, then it should't wake up if the display wasn't connected at all?

My M-1 MacMini has had this problem since its installation in January. I also have two Intel Minis and a Windows PC all connected to an HDMI switch (4-inputs to 2-Monitors). ONLY the M-1 exhibits this problem. It's troublesome, but easy to overcome since I can switch the monitor to another source and switch it back; the equivalent of unplugging the HDMI cable and re-plugging it in. I'd still like Apple to fix this as I'm not sure what else may be affected. Otherwise I find the M-1 to be a super machine. [Big Sur 11.6 + 16Gb RAM]

 

[haseenalam]

This happens on my Mini from 2018 with Big Sur. Interestingly I can use the machine from another Mac via screen sharing or from a PC using VNC.

This tells me the Mac is up and running, talking on the network, drives are spinning, etc. It just doesn’t know that it has to wake up the external display. In my case that is connected via HDMI.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

 

[ipsedixit]

This sometimes happens to my M1 Mac Mini.

If I disconnect and reconnect the USB-C plug that's connected the Mini to my monitor, it works again just fine.

 

[pshufd]

This happens on my Mini from 2018 with Big Sur. Interestingly I can use the machine from another Mac via screen sharing or from a PC using VNC.

This tells me the Mac is up and running, talking on the network, drives are spinning, etc. It just doesn’t know that it has to wake up the external display. In my case that is connected via HDMI.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

My wife's 2018 mini is running Mojave I think and she's never complained of a sleep issue. I will need to upgrade to Monterey when Mojave goes off support.

 

[jdb8167]

This happens on my Mini from 2018 with Big Sur. Interestingly I can use the machine from another Mac via screen sharing or from a PC using VNC.

This tells me the Mac is up and running, talking on the network, drives are spinning, etc. It just doesn’t know that it has to wake up the external display. In my case that is connected via HDMI.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

When using screen sharing, open System Preferences->Displays. Is your external display listed? If it isn’t try Option and click Detect Displays. If it is listed and you can change the resolution, try that as well.

On my M1 MacBook Air in clamshell mode, fiddling with the Displays system preference panel has always eventually woken the display.

 

[kiplog]

My M1 Mac Mini with Big Sur doesn't wake from sleep, maybe once every couple of months or so. USB or bluetooth keyboards, trackpads and mice don't wake it. Any keyboard trackpad or mouse connects (mouse moves etc) but can't waken from the screen saver.

No unplugging of any displays can wake it, tried different screensavers to see if it was the 'drift' screen saver making it too busy to wake. Unplugging peripherals will make the screen saver lag, but not wake.

It doesn't happen often enough to test network or other settings. It doesn't seem to matter if it's been sleeping all night, or just an hour or two. I usually just turn off sleeping while I'm working on something I don't want to have to restart.

I've set the Energy Saver never to sleep with all options checked (prevent from sleeping, wake for network, start after power failure) to see if it's a screen saver issue and not a sleep issue and will report if it happens again (in another month!)

 

[throwawayaccount]

TLDR: as a workaround, remote into the mac mini and use the system menu to put it to sleep, it will then wake up normally.

I am running a mac mini (2018) Intel on Catalina and have this issue. Mac will not turn on the display (connected by HDMI).

The only way I have been able to get around it (without restarting the computer) is to remote into the computer using Google Chrome Remote Desktop and going into the apple menu (top left) and then clicking "sleep" from there. The computer then goes to sleep kicking me out of remote desktop but afterwards I am able to wiggle my mouse and it turns the display on and works as normal.

Its very annoying I have to do this but as a workaround it beats having to restart the computer and potentially lose any unsaved work.

 

[osplo]

My M1 Mac Mini with Big Sur doesn't wake from sleep, maybe once every couple of months or so. USB or bluetooth keyboards, trackpads and mice don't wake it. Any keyboard trackpad or mouse connects (mouse moves etc) but can't waken from the screen saver.

No unplugging of any displays can wake it, tried different screensavers to see if it was the 'drift' screen saver making it too busy to wake. Unplugging peripherals will make the screen saver lag, but not wake.

It doesn't happen often enough to test network or other settings. It doesn't seem to matter if it's been sleeping all night, or just an hour or two. I usually just turn off sleeping while I'm working on something I don't want to have to restart.

I've set the Energy Saver never to sleep with all options checked (prevent from sleeping, wake for network, start after power failure) to see if it's a screen saver issue and not a sleep issue and will report if it happens again (in another month!

Have you tried Monterey?

 

[dadude999]

This has just started happening to me on my M1 Mac mini. The curious thing though is that it doesn't seem display related, it just goes into a deep sleep and refuses to wake up in any fashion. I usually tap my CAPS key on my magic keyboard to wake it up, because when the caps key lights up I know that the Mac mini has woken and getting ready to output to the monitor.

However, when it goes into this unwakeable sleep, the caps key doesn't light up. Trackpad doesn't wake it either, and it doesn't matter if I directly connect either the keyboard on the trackpad to the Mac mini. I've got an external drive connected, and I can see that this is sleeping too. I can plug-in or unplug any device, or disconnect or reconnect the HDMI cable (from either or both ends), switch the monitor off...all to no avail. Nothing (*nothing*) wakes it up, as far as I can tell.

The only thing that gets it going again is holding the power button down until it completely turns off, then powering it back up again. And unsurprisingly, if I disconnect the HDMI cable, the keyboard still carries on connecting with the Mac mini.

This is what's confusing me about the sleep issue, is everyone else not able to get any connection with their keyboard, mouse, trackpad etc? Most people comment on the display simply not coming on, and whilst this is a subset of the symptoms of the machine being asleep as a whole, I don't see how it's related. Surely, you should only be thinking about the display if everything else is connecting fine but the display output hasn't "woken up" yet? Or am I missing something.

Case in point: I just put my computer to sleep, unplugged the HDMI cable, hit CAPS a few times until I confirmed that it had connected, entered my password, hit enter, reconnected the HDMI cable and voila - my desktop right there. Surely if there was some symbiotic sleep relationship between the Mac mini and the display, then it should't wake up if the display wasn't connected at all?

This just happened to me as well. Nothing I could do to get it to wake. I finally ended up hard-stopping it... 2020 M1 Mac Mini.

 

[trevoz]

This just happened to me as well. Nothing I could do to get it to wake. I finally ended up hard-stopping it... 2020 M1 Mac Mini.

M1 Mac mini, Monterey. This has started happening to me too. My solution is to ssh in to it from another (old 2011) Mac mini which wakes everything up. Of courser you need "wake on network access" or what ever it is called these days turned on for this to work. Curiously, ping has no effect despite the M1 replying.

 

[dadude999]

M1 Mac mini, Monterey. This has started happening to me too. My solution is to ssh in to it from another (old 2011) Mac mini which wakes everything up. Of courser you need "wake on network access" or what ever it is called these days turned on for this to work. Curiously, ping has no effect despite the M1 replying.

That'll be my plan if this ever happens again. I hope it doesn't though. Would probably have to file a warranty claim at that point...

 

[dbrewood]

My 'fix' regimen which works on my Intel Mac Mini is:

• In power - Uncheck put hard disks to sleep where possible
• System Preferences / Mission Control / De-Select “Displays have separate Spaces” / Log Out / Log In
• Terminal - 'sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400
  ' - This will push deep hibernation out to 24 hours as opposed to the default 4 hours (14400 is default).

 

[bhtwo]

New M1 Mini arrived last weekend.

No signal to display (Hann-G VGA)
Tried all ports, HDMI and Thunderbolt. I had to go out and buy various adapters.
Nothing.

Old Philips monitor works fine (HDMI) but doesn't give me the resolution I would like and was using with my old mini, but after a few days I'm getting the blank screen after sleep.

It's an amazing difference after my Intel Mini, but this display issue is going to force me to get a replacement.
Don't know if another M1 isn't going to have the same issues.

 

[trevoz]

New M1 Mini arrived last weekend.
[...]
Don't know if another M1 isn't going to have the same issues.

There is no point - it will not change anything. At least the M1 wakes up via ssh, my 2018 Intel Mac minis allow ssh in but still don't wake up until unplugging and replugging the USB-C monitor cable. This whole issue started with the 2018 Mac mini and has never been fixed by Apple.

 

[bhtwo]

Okay
I have two mac displays arriving later today from a friend (surplus to requirements)
One of them should work, i'm hoping.

What ever happened to 'Plug 'n Play'?

 

[pshufd]

Okay
I have two mac displays arriving later today from a friend (surplice to requirements)
One of them should work, i'm hoping.

What ever happened to 'Plug 'n Play'?

I find that things are more complicated with 4k. I had issues with the GPU on my Windows desktop with black screens. Tried multiple cables and my ultimate solution was to use Intel Integrated. Might be drivers, operating system or the GPU. I've had no problems with 2k monitors. I've done a lot of experimentation to get my desktop to work and it does work now including the M1 mini.

 

[trevoz]

What ever happened to 'Plug 'n Play'?

You mean "Plug and Pray"

 

[bhtwo]

Update

Mac display was broken
Other display was a Samsung - no mains lead

None the wiser

Bollocks!

I really did not expect this hassle from Apple..

We are being made fools of methinks

To be continued...

 

[dbrewood]

Did you try what I suggested above which works on my Intel Mac Mini:

• In power - Uncheck put hard disks to sleep where possible
• System Preferences / Mission Control / De-Select “Displays have separate Spaces” / Log Out / Log In
• Terminal - 'sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400
  ' - This will push deep hibernation out to 24 hours as opposed to the default 4 hours (14400 is default).

 

[bhtwo]

Did you try what I suggested above which works on my Intel Mac Mini:

• In power - Uncheck put hard disks to sleep where possible
• System Preferences / Mission Control / De-Select “Displays have separate Spaces” / Log Out / Log In
• Terminal - 'sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400
  ' - This will push deep hibernation out to 24 hours as opposed to the default 4 hours (14400 is default).

I will try when I've recovered from my depression.

But! Why should I even have to do this!?