Same, just right now. I'd swapped out a couple of USB drives and a hub some months back and stopped seeing the issue. Then just now I came home and my machine had restarted while I was gone.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M1 Mac SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)
- Thread starter sunny5
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hello all. I've been lurking on this topic for quite a while. It's time I shared -
Overview:
My M1 MacMini has been experiencing these spontaneous "Restarts" irregularly since I put it in service nearly a year ago now. Thus far, I have been unable to discern any pattern of hardware configuration, I/O activity, or app usage that exacerbates or alleviates the frequency of these ocurrances.
Only recently have I begun collecting pertinent files from /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, however I see a .panic file for the time of the most recent event, and subsequent .shutdownStall files for each instance of a user "restart" thereafter. The panic lists "SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)" as the cause event.
Configuration and History:
Until yesterday, my QHD monitor [Z321QU] was connected directly to the HDMI port in the MacMini. Stereo Audio is routed thru the analog audio jack to amplified speakers. There are USB-A connected devices common to all configurations [Apple Keyboard, Mouse, and a Video Capture device] but the TB3 sockets have been empty. No external storage has been attached during any event, and only USB thumb-drives were ever temporarily connected.
HDMI has a history of problems and sensitivity on this Mac. When initially purchased, this monitor would not function via a HDMI 1.3 cable. Only after connecting an HDMI 2(?) cable was it usable. Even then, it was not uncommon to need to "unplug" the HDMI cable from the Mac, and re-plug it to have the monitor be "seen" by the system and used. This happened on clean powerups of the Mac, and on software restarts. It is particularly common to find this state after a system induced restart event.
The unit has never been paired to a BT device, nor has WiFi ever been used. Both are software "Disabled", for what that's worth. The system is primarily operated with the video monitor turned off (soft-off) using ScreenSharing over Ethernet. The system is not internet connected, and no system updates have ever been applied. [virgin as-purchased]
It was logged into the App Store briefly to obtain FinalCut Pro. 3rd party apps installed are VLC video player, Handbrake, HDpvrCapture and StarryNight Pro 8. Only VLC and video capture apps have been active during an event. No "drivers" have ever been knowingly applied.
This MacMini has 16GB ram and 1TB internal storage. (The 2TB version was "special order" and this was in stock) The System OS is 11.3.1 Big Sur, as shipped.
Deductions:
From that history I deduce that, for me anyway, no software drivers are present other than those of the Apple supplied base system unit. External HD storage is not required to demonstrate the problem, nor is TB3 use.
I think running out of RAM and HD storage can be safely ruled out as factors. It is possible that a memory leak in VLC could consume memory. However, this can be seen and the app restarted to cure. It has never hung the system or caused restart to my knowledge. The video capture app is restarted frequently. [hardware reliability reasons]
HDMI is highly suspect, and USB-A cannot be excluded. Only one instance of "Restart" occurred concurrent to Ethernet file transfer, but all others happened during Video capture or with VLC and video capture software loaded but idle.
Sleep - My system is never in sleep mode. It is operated continuously so that video captures can be scheduled. It is set to continue normal operation even with the monitor off. This is proven effective using Apple ScreenSharing from another Mac.
Configuration changes and Further Testing:
Working on the premise of eliminating I/O connectivity commonality, I decided to attempt to connect to the monitor via something OTHER than the MacMini's internal HDMI, preferably not HDMI at all.
This proved to be difficult to achieve. I won't outline the entire reasoning / troubleshooting chain but connecting the monitor's Displayport interface directly to TB3/USB4 via Displayport cable adapters [- including the apple TB2-TB3 adapter] did not work.
The final config that does work is: MacMini TB3<-->Apple TB2/3<-->OWC TB2 Dock<-->Displayport cable. Yeah, unbelievable.
The only advantage I see to this arrangment is that changing / adding another monitor to the HDMI port of the Dock is easy, though not desired.
If this configuration still demonstrates the problem, I intend to next move all USB devices to the Dock and retest.
Conclusion:
Hopefully some of you out there will gain insight comparing my experience to yours, and respond with those thoughts.
Thank You
Overview:
My M1 MacMini has been experiencing these spontaneous "Restarts" irregularly since I put it in service nearly a year ago now. Thus far, I have been unable to discern any pattern of hardware configuration, I/O activity, or app usage that exacerbates or alleviates the frequency of these ocurrances.
Only recently have I begun collecting pertinent files from /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, however I see a .panic file for the time of the most recent event, and subsequent .shutdownStall files for each instance of a user "restart" thereafter. The panic lists "SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)" as the cause event.
Configuration and History:
Until yesterday, my QHD monitor [Z321QU] was connected directly to the HDMI port in the MacMini. Stereo Audio is routed thru the analog audio jack to amplified speakers. There are USB-A connected devices common to all configurations [Apple Keyboard, Mouse, and a Video Capture device] but the TB3 sockets have been empty. No external storage has been attached during any event, and only USB thumb-drives were ever temporarily connected.
HDMI has a history of problems and sensitivity on this Mac. When initially purchased, this monitor would not function via a HDMI 1.3 cable. Only after connecting an HDMI 2(?) cable was it usable. Even then, it was not uncommon to need to "unplug" the HDMI cable from the Mac, and re-plug it to have the monitor be "seen" by the system and used. This happened on clean powerups of the Mac, and on software restarts. It is particularly common to find this state after a system induced restart event.
The unit has never been paired to a BT device, nor has WiFi ever been used. Both are software "Disabled", for what that's worth. The system is primarily operated with the video monitor turned off (soft-off) using ScreenSharing over Ethernet. The system is not internet connected, and no system updates have ever been applied. [virgin as-purchased]
It was logged into the App Store briefly to obtain FinalCut Pro. 3rd party apps installed are VLC video player, Handbrake, HDpvrCapture and StarryNight Pro 8. Only VLC and video capture apps have been active during an event. No "drivers" have ever been knowingly applied.
This MacMini has 16GB ram and 1TB internal storage. (The 2TB version was "special order" and this was in stock) The System OS is 11.3.1 Big Sur, as shipped.
Deductions:
From that history I deduce that, for me anyway, no software drivers are present other than those of the Apple supplied base system unit. External HD storage is not required to demonstrate the problem, nor is TB3 use.
I think running out of RAM and HD storage can be safely ruled out as factors. It is possible that a memory leak in VLC could consume memory. However, this can be seen and the app restarted to cure. It has never hung the system or caused restart to my knowledge. The video capture app is restarted frequently. [hardware reliability reasons]
HDMI is highly suspect, and USB-A cannot be excluded. Only one instance of "Restart" occurred concurrent to Ethernet file transfer, but all others happened during Video capture or with VLC and video capture software loaded but idle.
Sleep - My system is never in sleep mode. It is operated continuously so that video captures can be scheduled. It is set to continue normal operation even with the monitor off. This is proven effective using Apple ScreenSharing from another Mac.
Configuration changes and Further Testing:
Working on the premise of eliminating I/O connectivity commonality, I decided to attempt to connect to the monitor via something OTHER than the MacMini's internal HDMI, preferably not HDMI at all.
This proved to be difficult to achieve. I won't outline the entire reasoning / troubleshooting chain but connecting the monitor's Displayport interface directly to TB3/USB4 via Displayport cable adapters [- including the apple TB2-TB3 adapter] did not work.
The final config that does work is: MacMini TB3<-->Apple TB2/3<-->OWC TB2 Dock<-->Displayport cable. Yeah, unbelievable.
The only advantage I see to this arrangment is that changing / adding another monitor to the HDMI port of the Dock is easy, though not desired.
If this configuration still demonstrates the problem, I intend to next move all USB devices to the Dock and retest.
Conclusion:
Hopefully some of you out there will gain insight comparing my experience to yours, and respond with those thoughts.
Thank You
M1 is a totally different architecture. There is no PRAM or NVRAM anymore in the way we knew on Intel. All changed.
Hi team
This and other problems have started occurring since the recent update to Safari. Which coincided with a new monitor being used. Did the Safari update introduce the blind thumbnail image issues alongside the Mac SOCD problem?
This and other problems have started occurring since the recent update to Safari. Which coincided with a new monitor being used. Did the Safari update introduce the blind thumbnail image issues alongside the Mac SOCD problem?
I'm providing this promised update, running the configuration above for just shy of 60 days.
- -No SOCDs at all since my previous post. No machine restarts, manual or self-induced.
- -The only diagnostic reports (2) are Finder "CPU Usage" events. Both seem to be related to my running the same instance of VLC for over a month, although one of them is attributed to Screensharing - which was active at the time.
- -The symptom was a "frozen" VLC window. Exiting the app, and reloading it cured the issue - and I believe resulted in the reports.
- I am running "VLC Version 3.0.16 Vetinari (Apple Silicon)" and it has been otherwise acceptable.
- My Video Capture app is behaving better than it is on other platforms, with fewer instances of issues it's known for - on previous Macs. Consequently, I can say that it's stability is definitely not "Worse" and may be somewhat improved, despite it being loaded continuously. It is known on other platforms to require re-loading the app after every 4hrs or so of recording, to remain stable. This is true for this M1 installation also.
I am still running the original *as shipped* M1 MacMini macOS 11.3.1 (Build 20E241) with no updates whatsoever. I declined the firmware update when first setting up the unit and did not permit any "updates" to OS or Apps. The only permitted activity was accessing the App Store to obtain FinalCut Pro. Other app loads were performed offline "sneaker-net" style.
This M1 has had no internet connectivity since that occasion (last year).
Consequently, I don't think my SOCDs could be related to Safari - which is un-updated and which I do not use on that machine at all. (except to get version info for this post)
Safari identifies as "Version 14.1 (16611.1.21.161.6) Copyright © 2003–2021 Apple Inc."
Hopefully that helps your efforts.
Thanks for that. Yes, I've allowed all updates to OS and Safari as I have lots of synchronised devices – but very few applications. Mostly standard Apple apps plus the Adobe Creative Suite, and I've found keeping as lean as possible has worked in the past, especially for handoff etc between devices.
I found the source of my problems of pink/crash/restarts and just posted about it in this Macrumors thread:
Any fix for the random pink screen reboots on the new M1 macs??
Any fix for the random pink screen reboots on the new M1 macs??
In two weeks it will have been 5 months since my system had an SOCD, Video Display "pink screen", Spurious Restart, or any real problem whatsoever.
So, I'm calling it. My case was "cured" by moving the Video Monitor from HDMI to an adapter hung off the TB3 port. It should be noted that this "Monitor" was not apple made but one of those high performance gaming rigs with screen refresh rate north of 120hz and up to 250 in some modes I don't use. This causes me to wonder if using an apple monitor would alleviate the issue too, either by moving video from HDMI to TB3 natively or because of an apple familiar refresh rate. [one of the apple resellers I spoke to implied this]
Having read your posts to that thread [thank you for the heads up] I must conclude that our cases are induced differently - even though symptomatically we are very, very similar.
FYI - I've read of many instances where M1 adopters went through the 'Apple Care' route, replacing motherboards and whatnot only to end up in exactly the same place, albeit with extra frustration.
Intermittent problems are the hardest to diagnose.
My belief is that apple will eventually find the culprit and issue a fix - I'd guess flashing a firmware update to the system. Such things have happened in the past when changeover to intel took place. I missed out on the 68K to ppc changeover, but it may have then too.
As for me, I'll miss out this time around because I will apply no further OS updates except perhaps specific fixes.
Only three issues seem to remain, none of them showstoppers.
1) Audio output via the analog jack has a periodic dropout [~10 sec?] resembling a tic. It's not present in video recordings, so I suspect it may be in the analog output chain.
2) Software selection of some Settings fail to persist through a restart. Enunciation of System time using an optional "Voice" being one. The voice must be reselected each time the system is restarted. As it turns out, this flaw helped me recognize and keep track of those SOCDs. Kind of a restart 'canary'.
3) The ability to schedule an app to run from a calendar event has some sort of problem. It's as if once triggered, the event continues to re-launch the app. There appears to have been some update involving this which did not get applied to my system prior to shipment. This has not been important enough to pursue, and certainly not enough to risk exposing the system to further updates.
While I have noted errors in apps converted for M1 use, I do not count them as caused by the system. Sadly, one of these is in Handbrake - making it unsuitable for use on this platform as originally intended. Hence one of the major hoped-for performance gains of the platform evaporated.
I'll drop by this thread should anyone have any questions for me, but won't be posting again unless my status changes or some revelatory breakthrough reveals itself.
Hopefully others will find confirmation, if not help, in these contributions.
Thank you all - best of luck.
So, I'm calling it. My case was "cured" by moving the Video Monitor from HDMI to an adapter hung off the TB3 port. It should be noted that this "Monitor" was not apple made but one of those high performance gaming rigs with screen refresh rate north of 120hz and up to 250 in some modes I don't use. This causes me to wonder if using an apple monitor would alleviate the issue too, either by moving video from HDMI to TB3 natively or because of an apple familiar refresh rate. [one of the apple resellers I spoke to implied this]
Having read your posts to that thread [thank you for the heads up] I must conclude that our cases are induced differently - even though symptomatically we are very, very similar.
FYI - I've read of many instances where M1 adopters went through the 'Apple Care' route, replacing motherboards and whatnot only to end up in exactly the same place, albeit with extra frustration.
Intermittent problems are the hardest to diagnose.
My belief is that apple will eventually find the culprit and issue a fix - I'd guess flashing a firmware update to the system. Such things have happened in the past when changeover to intel took place. I missed out on the 68K to ppc changeover, but it may have then too.
As for me, I'll miss out this time around because I will apply no further OS updates except perhaps specific fixes.
Only three issues seem to remain, none of them showstoppers.
1) Audio output via the analog jack has a periodic dropout [~10 sec?] resembling a tic. It's not present in video recordings, so I suspect it may be in the analog output chain.
2) Software selection of some Settings fail to persist through a restart. Enunciation of System time using an optional "Voice" being one. The voice must be reselected each time the system is restarted. As it turns out, this flaw helped me recognize and keep track of those SOCDs. Kind of a restart 'canary'.
3) The ability to schedule an app to run from a calendar event has some sort of problem. It's as if once triggered, the event continues to re-launch the app. There appears to have been some update involving this which did not get applied to my system prior to shipment. This has not been important enough to pursue, and certainly not enough to risk exposing the system to further updates.
While I have noted errors in apps converted for M1 use, I do not count them as caused by the system. Sadly, one of these is in Handbrake - making it unsuitable for use on this platform as originally intended. Hence one of the major hoped-for performance gains of the platform evaporated.
I'll drop by this thread should anyone have any questions for me, but won't be posting again unless my status changes or some revelatory breakthrough reveals itself.
Hopefully others will find confirmation, if not help, in these contributions.
Thank you all - best of luck.
Not much hard evidence there, to be honest, but if your 'cure' (moving from hdmi output to adapter out, hdmi or displayport?), works, I'm happy for you. A little outline of your computer setup would be helpful. OS version, mac model, etc.
My solution is still working for me.
After 6 weeks, it happened again today;
"SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)".
Hard crash and instantaneous restart.
No green/pink screen or strange sounds this time though.
I had a green screen recently while watching Youtube, although I had other apps open at the same time. Hopefully it's just a one off, I did get the panic report just in case.
Welcome to the club. :-(
'Nothing connected to any port', I call that valuable information. Thank you.
So I'm more and more inclined to believe that this is a very deep, basic HW/OS thing.
At least we can limit it to Apple silicon, if I haven't missed anything - and across the latest two OS'es.
Can I just throw this out there; I think I was streaming video of some kind everytime this happened to me. Anyone else?
(Added: no, I don't mean that kind of video, although that would be a bit exciting, if we all got this while… no forget it
. No just online video of any kind.)
(Added: no, I don't mean that kind of video, although that would be a bit exciting, if we all got this while… no forget it
. No just online video of any kind.)
Last edited:
This happened to me for a second time. M1 Pro 16" MacBook Pro.
The first time was 45 days ago and it made a loud popping sound that scared the life out of me and there was graphical glitchiness on the screen, green and pink. The only thing plugged in at the time was a charger.
It happened a second time yesterday. No graphical glitch - the screen just turned black. The popping sound was a lot softer. I had nothing at all plugged into my MacBook this time - not even the charger. I don't remember what I was doing the first time it happened, but I was watching a YouTube video in Firefox this time. When it rebooted, it displayed the same error as before. I took a screenshot both times: "SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)"
I also saved the diag report this time.
I still have 2 months on my 1-yr warranty. I know some people have had their logic boards replaced because of this, but I also see some of those people still had this issue afterward. I wish Apple would just come out and say they are aware of the issue and working to resolve it. I'd be fine with waiting until they push out a fix. Instead I'm contemplating whether to waste my time having them replace hardware unnecessarily, and leaving me without a computer in the process.
The first time was 45 days ago and it made a loud popping sound that scared the life out of me and there was graphical glitchiness on the screen, green and pink. The only thing plugged in at the time was a charger.
It happened a second time yesterday. No graphical glitch - the screen just turned black. The popping sound was a lot softer. I had nothing at all plugged into my MacBook this time - not even the charger. I don't remember what I was doing the first time it happened, but I was watching a YouTube video in Firefox this time. When it rebooted, it displayed the same error as before. I took a screenshot both times: "SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)"
I also saved the diag report this time.
I still have 2 months on my 1-yr warranty. I know some people have had their logic boards replaced because of this, but I also see some of those people still had this issue afterward. I wish Apple would just come out and say they are aware of the issue and working to resolve it. I'd be fine with waiting until they push out a fix. Instead I'm contemplating whether to waste my time having them replace hardware unnecessarily, and leaving me without a computer in the process.
Thank you!
Now if we can get confirmation (or the opposite) from more people if they were indeed watching video when this happened to them, we could at least have a clue, or we could rule it out as a clue.
I was also using Firefox to watch video online when it happened to me.
I'm thinking Apple silicon; System on a chip, graphics cores on the high performance processor, pretty new technology and unchartered waters… but what do I know.
I just read thru this thread again, and many are reporting that these crashes happen when working with, or watching video of some kind. Streamed or local. The quote from KernelG is typical for those. Then there are many posts that focus on peripherals, and IMO they are mostly theories and inconclusive, and some report crashes with nothing connected to the ports.
I'm more convinced now that this has to do with the Apple silicon processors and their graphics cores design, maybe also MacOS. Some report of this happening with Monterey also (betas, at least), so not exclusive to big sur.
Just got this message for the first time on Macbook Pro M1 16 Max bought November 2021. The Macbook was in sleep mode, not plugged in, not connected to any external drives, running Monterey 12.5.1. The message was there when I woke it from sleep. Is there an answer to what this is?
No answer.
Luckily this seems to happen very seldom to most people. If it's like once or twice a year and it doesn't break anything, I'm OK with it.
What about video? No chance any video was running in the background and your mac wasn't really asleep? We've discussed that as a clue, as it's come up several times. Maybe even something graphic like a screensaver running without you knowing?
Added: One thing is certain: this is a thing that happens on Apple silicon only. Not really surprising that Apple don't want this out. Hence their total silence.
I just had this happen to me. Scared the crap out of me - loud CRACK noise, totally blank screen. I thought my laptop was dead at first. Gave me the "SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)" error when I brought it back up.
16" M1 Pro, 32GB memory, Mac OS 12.6. I was using internal video conferencing software (like Zoom, but not zoom), but nothing plugged in except my USBC VPN token which doesn't interact with the computer unless you touch it to generate the token.
16" M1 Pro, 32GB memory, Mac OS 12.6. I was using internal video conferencing software (like Zoom, but not zoom), but nothing plugged in except my USBC VPN token which doesn't interact with the computer unless you touch it to generate the token.
Thanks for posting.
Yes, it can be quite scary; the strange noise burst, sometimes the pink or green patterns, then self restart, and this 'watchdog' message. Feels very disturbing.
Yet, I feel it's something I can live with. I've had my M1 Mini since january, and I think it's three times now that it's happened. It has not broken anything, so it's been a very small inconvenience, really.
And, I note that you were, like many of us, using some sort of live video when it happened. So thanks for that. Also nothing plugged in. Another testament that peripherals are not part of the cause.
Erase and clean install MacOS and hope it goes away. If not then it's likely hardware fault. Knock on wood, I haven't had this happen even on Ventura but I always do clean install instead of upgrade.
From Reddit: