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Dozer_Zaibatsu

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 10, 2006
346
381
North America
This started today. I'll run down the symptoms.

tl;dr

The Mac does not think the lid is closed.
The monitor itself does not seem to have any damage or distortion to it.
Brightness settings make no difference.

Details:

Suddenly, even while listening to a podcast, my laptop screen simply turned black. Podcast did not stop. No indication that the Mac went to sleep or anything like that.

Plugged it into my USB-C LG monitor. The screen comes on the LG monitor on my left. And the cursor disappears when I move it to the right (the laptop screen). And other windows can be dragged over to the screen and back. The Mac treats the LG as a second, extended screen. As it is set to do.

When I close the lid of the Mac, the Mac recognizes that the lid is closed. At that point, all windows go only to the LG monitor and I no longer can drag the cursor past it. It works normally as a docked laptop with a closed lid. As it would normally do.

When I open up the screen again, the Mac screen is visible for about one second. (Perfectly bright and clear. No distortion.) And then it goes off again. Same symptoms as above.

I did run available updates and restart.

I did toggle the brightness all the way up and down. No difference. The attached LG monitor did react with the brightness, but made no change to the Mac.

Anyone think there is a sensor that is hosed here?
 
Maybe I spoke too soon about the laptop screen appearing fine. Now when I open it, the output on the laptop screen itself starts to appear a little wobbly before it goes black. (The LG is fine and never distorts or looks to be any different than usual.)

Would I be able to replace any of that? Would it entail replacing the whole screen?

A little on the nose that this is happening just about three years after I bought it. No, didn't get extended Applecare.
 
I am facing this issue starting today. I have external monitor connecting through HDMI.

I was typing on document and suddenly the screen on macbook went black. The visual on the external is still fine as i can see my mouse cursor moving.

What I did was press power button to go to Login screen (it takes 5 seconds +- to response) and login, everything is back to normal.

I have not restarted the mac yet.

MacOS: 14.4 (23E214)
 
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