Some M1 Mac mini owners are reporting issues with the machine not waking a connected third-party display from sleep.
While the issue doesn’t seem to be affecting all M1 Mac mini users, there have been numerous complaints posted on the Apple Support Communities dating back to November when the Mac mini was first released. MacRumors also reports that complaints have surfaced in their forums.
From MacRumors reader gooimac:
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)
Meanwhile, Apple Support Community user Pearsnet reports a similar issue:
Ive a brand new M1 mac mini with 2 external displays 1 on USBC and another on HDMI. One is a samsung 32 4k and the other is an asus 28 4k. Both work perfectly with the mac ordinarily, however on wake from sleep often one or both of them wont turn back on. Turning them off and on doesn’t seem to help but unplugging and replugging the cables into the back of the Mac Mini seems to get them working again. This seems to be rather random, sometimes its just one monitor sometimes its the other, sometimes i get graphical glitches on one of the screens (agains fixed by unplugging and replugging the monitor cable into the back of the mini). To me this seems like a software glitch with the graphics drivers I would assume the next update will fix this. I just wanted to flag it up to see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing?
The issue doesn’t seem to be limited to a particular Mac mini, as another MacRumors reader has experienced the same problems.
I have a new Mac Mini M1 with 16 GB of RAM running Big Sur 11.2.3 and every time the computer and screen go to sleep, the computer will not be able to wake the screen up.
Actually, I get “No Signal” displayed on the screen after the Mini wakes so technically the computer wakes the monitor but it fails to send a video signal. The screen is a 34″ LG Ultrawide 4K Thunderbolt. It wakes fine with my 2018 MacBook Pro so there’s nothing wrong with the display itself.
The only way I can get the Mini to send a signal to the display is to unplug and replug in the Thunderbolt cable. Sometimes repeatedly. Obviously, this is not an ideal solution.
The issue seems to be affecting various types of displays, including those that connect over Thunderbolt, HDMI, and DisplayPort adapters. It should be noted that this writer uses a 256GB/8GB M1 Mac mini, and I haven’t experienced this issue.
Apple is said to be aware of the issue and is likely working on a fix. Currently, the only solution for dealing with the issue is to either disable the sleep feature on your Mac mini or to unplug and replug the display connector on a display that doesn’t wake from sleep when the Mac mini does. Unfortunately, both solutions are less than optimal.
