There seems to be a problem with MacOS regarding sleep mode and external displays. I've recently upgraded my MacBook Air from an 2017 Intel unit to a recent M3 unit and started experiencing problems I never had before.
Due to the lack of ports on the current gen Apple Silicon MBA, I bought a UGreen Revodock to connect peripherals, including an external display. Worked fine right away, no drivers needed. One cable for everything, that's cool.
I was happy until one day when I came back to my MBA, woke it up from sleep mode and the second display stayed dark. Mouse and external disk still functioned, but the external monitor could not be detected. The fix was always either: (1) a reboot or (2) disconnect/wait/reconnect the dock.
Since the UGreen device is an inexpensive device, I thought, OK they must have cut corners somewhere to make it cheaper, let's get a more expensive dock that should be designed/built to meet all the software/hardware requirements for external stuff. So I bought a DisplayLink-compatible Targus dock, the exact same kind of unit we use at the office.
Besides discovering that DisplayLink lets you use two external displays in addition of the built-in monitor on a M3 MBA, I eventually ended up seeing the same issue, i.e.: on wake-up, the external display not being available (but no problem with other peripherals). The fixes are the same as with the cheaper dock.
The only difference I've seen with the Targus device, is that the purple "screen sharing/copy" status, er, "widget" in the menu bar is no longer visible when the second monitor is no longer detected. It's as if part of the DisplayLink software stopped working. The main DisplayLink manager "widget" is still there, but doesn't offer me a means to re-launch whatever stopped working.
(Note, FWIW: I'm running MacOS X v15.1 & the most recent DisplayLink software. I'm using a Targus DOCK177USZ USB 3.0 Universal Docking Station. We use those at the office.)
Anyway, I don't think the issue is with the DisplayLink software, because the no-driver, no-software-required UGreen Revodock has the same issue. I think it's more with MacOS X, but I don't have the foggiest what the issue is exactly. I must also add that the problem doesn't happen every time I have to step away from my Mac and that it goes to sleep, but it's not a very rare occurence either.
So, am I the only one that has that issue? Are there others who are going through this? Is there a better fix than a reboot or a disconnect-connect manoeuvre?
*** One more thing: I think that DisplayLink support should be baked in MacOS, it's a way to get around limitations on the number of external displays that can be used with, say, an M3 MBA. Apple should look into this for a future release of MacOS.
Due to the lack of ports on the current gen Apple Silicon MBA, I bought a UGreen Revodock to connect peripherals, including an external display. Worked fine right away, no drivers needed. One cable for everything, that's cool.
I was happy until one day when I came back to my MBA, woke it up from sleep mode and the second display stayed dark. Mouse and external disk still functioned, but the external monitor could not be detected. The fix was always either: (1) a reboot or (2) disconnect/wait/reconnect the dock.
Since the UGreen device is an inexpensive device, I thought, OK they must have cut corners somewhere to make it cheaper, let's get a more expensive dock that should be designed/built to meet all the software/hardware requirements for external stuff. So I bought a DisplayLink-compatible Targus dock, the exact same kind of unit we use at the office.
Besides discovering that DisplayLink lets you use two external displays in addition of the built-in monitor on a M3 MBA, I eventually ended up seeing the same issue, i.e.: on wake-up, the external display not being available (but no problem with other peripherals). The fixes are the same as with the cheaper dock.
The only difference I've seen with the Targus device, is that the purple "screen sharing/copy" status, er, "widget" in the menu bar is no longer visible when the second monitor is no longer detected. It's as if part of the DisplayLink software stopped working. The main DisplayLink manager "widget" is still there, but doesn't offer me a means to re-launch whatever stopped working.
(Note, FWIW: I'm running MacOS X v15.1 & the most recent DisplayLink software. I'm using a Targus DOCK177USZ USB 3.0 Universal Docking Station. We use those at the office.)
Anyway, I don't think the issue is with the DisplayLink software, because the no-driver, no-software-required UGreen Revodock has the same issue. I think it's more with MacOS X, but I don't have the foggiest what the issue is exactly. I must also add that the problem doesn't happen every time I have to step away from my Mac and that it goes to sleep, but it's not a very rare occurence either.
So, am I the only one that has that issue? Are there others who are going through this? Is there a better fix than a reboot or a disconnect-connect manoeuvre?
*** One more thing: I think that DisplayLink support should be baked in MacOS, it's a way to get around limitations on the number of external displays that can be used with, say, an M3 MBA. Apple should look into this for a future release of MacOS.
