black screen in Catalina

I had the same problem, however "automatic graphics switching" was not an option within my energy saver preferences. I found the instructions on this site to be immensely helpful. Solution 1 worked right away.

I too didnt have the "Automatic Graphics Switching" option on my MBP, so that's a no go for me.

@TB Express - I've seen that article before, however, nothing from it remotely suggests any workaround regarding the black screen issue, short of wiping Catalina and reinstalling Mojave and restoring data from TimeMachine backups.

As such, can I please check/confirm which "Solution 1" that you indicated that worked right away? Thanks.

@wlgspotter the solution I was referring to above was to enter recovery mode and use first aid on each individual hard drive/partition, then restart to complete. After completing those steps, I closed and opened my computer several times, thereby activating the sleep function, and upon opening the black/grey screen issue did not occur. However, as I opened the laptop to respond to this message, the problem repeated itself, so I need to edit my previous comment, as the "solution" did not resolve the issue afterall. Pending an apple update to the software in the near future, I'm going to have to resort to wiping catalina and reinstalling mojave

@TB Express - thanks for your message, and your update. Guess we will have to wait for Apple to come up with a fix, however, as per the post and link shared by @appzattak earlier I guess it may take a while since it appearsApple is clueless as to why this is happening. It must be a widespread issue as quite a number of us is facing the issue.

I am definitely holding back upgrading my Mac Mini until at least a fix is out for this - still hopeful for a fix soon.

This is a nice workaround, but not really a solution. All it does it to prevent sleep mode when power is on (not sure if the graphics switching has any effect, I don't have that on mine).

It will still sleep when running on battery, and end up in black screen (for me at least)

This solution didn't work for me either. I spent 1hr 45mins on the phone with Apple support yesterday and they had me move all files out of the LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons folder in both the visible and non-visible Library folders:

Macintosh HD/Library

User/Name/Library (visible when holding down option key in the Finder Go menu)

This worked for a while, but today the problem returned. I went back to those folders and the main files related to Microsoft OneDrive and Google Chrome. By process of elimination I uninstalled Chrome, removed all related files and the problem is resolved. I think it's related to some of the automatic software update files that are embedded in Chrome and opened on launch. I may of course be wrong, all I know is that this has worked for me, and the above solution did not.

was having this problem but on a Mac mini 2018 . I solved the problem by connecting to my monitor via usb c to cdmi adapter . so far been running 24 hours with no problems . I even did a couple of restarts and shutdowns with no problem .

Funny thing is that 2014 iMac had not a single problem downloading and updating to Catalina . This was the computer I was worried about but it runs like a champ .

Oh wow thanks for sharing this. I did just as advised, and it seemed to have worked for me! Still early days, I'm testing it out more, but initial tests seemed to indicate that the restart to SAFE Mode then restart again to Normal mode may have fixed it - fingers crossed!

Hmm looks like I might have said it too early. Did some testing, booted back to normal after (after booting into SAFE Mode), closed the lid, left it for 5-10 minutes, and opened my lid, and safe issue with the black screen...

Either something within my profile is causing the issue, or maybe there is something else... Anyone else’s ave any ideas...?

2019 Macbook Pro with touchbar chiming in here. Same issue. I just get a black screen with cursor when trying to wake from sleep. The touchbar still works though and acts like I'm getting logged in but the screen doesn't change. I can change the brightness of the backlit keyboard, however I cannot change the brightness of the screen from the touchbar. Really frustrating having to hard shutdown my mac to use it now after walking away for awhile.

Possible workaround that has been successful for me on several run throughs (2017 air): go to the apple drop down menu at the top left and click "sleep," wait several seconds, close laptop, wait several seconds, open laptop.

Everybody who has marked this issue as solved in other posts later posted that it wasn't solved. I've wasted hours trying every suggestion to fix this issue (reinstalling Catalina, resetting SMC and NVRAM, starting in safe mode, etc), all to no avail. Hopefully a bug fix comes out to address this soon otherwise abandon all hope.

Today I don't see getting around acknowledging that never letting my display go to sleep may shorten its life. Can't be much worse then just hard powering down my Mac with a handful of open apps. I guess if you walk away long enough to let your monitor go to sleep, you don't care what you come back to... Let's get this fixed MacOS Developer Teams, clearly a reported issue.

Yeah I certainly hope there is a fix soon, as the hard reset every time the screen is just risky and definitely not a long term solution. I was always worried about data corruption if I do a hard reset - just had to do a hard reset, and when my MBP boots up it gets stuck at the Apple Logo with the progress bar reaching the end (i.e. 100%) but my MBP is still not showing the login screen - have been like this for 5 minutes now so I’m kind of worried.

Hopefully Apple comes up with a fix soon.