black screen in Catalina

Exact same issue. Reset SMC And NVRAM. Stuck on a blank screen any time the computer reboots. Only way to resolve is to hard restart computer.

I’ll reinstall Catalina from scratch, will wipe all my data and see if this issue disappears.

EDIT: Fast User Switching may have something to do with this as well. Make sure it's enabled.

The solution without rebooting is to reduce the display brightness to zero and return it to the desired position.

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)

Hmm that's interesting. I'm not sure why would your system indicate that - are you using any kind of external monitor that may make use of any of the drivers?

I definitely allowed me to remove it from my system without issues.

Sorry can't be of much help, other than to perhaps check with the manufacturer of your display drivers to see if they might have updated drivers?

Had that issue a few times, now no longer happening getting something else but more serious. Note that for me my system is only ever going to sleep or left unattended for a long period of time while docked, I can't speak to the behavior when running on battery without external displays connected.

My issue is that I can't reboot and get anything to display UNLESS docked (CalDigit TS3 Plus). If I reboot without being docked, no matter how many times I retry, I will get a black screen. Powering down and then plugging into the dock (which powers on automatically when plugged) will then boot without fail every time. This is really concerning, and very frustrating. If I have to reboot for any reason, or access BootCamp, I won't be able to get back into macOS again unless at home and docked. Tried what was suggested here and moved some kexts, rebooted and replaced, had no effect whatsoever. Same issue as described continues to happen consistently.

Kexts I have (not that I think it matters since moving them an replacing them didn't do jack):

ACS6x.kext

ArcMSR.kext

ATTOCelerityFC8.kext

ATTOExpressSASHBA2.kext

ATTOExpressSASRAID2.kext

CalDigitHDProDrv.kext

HighPointIOP.kext

HighPointRR.kext

HueSync.kext

PromiseSTEX.kext

SoftRAID.kext

ufsd_NTFS.kext

Hoping we, or Apple, can come up with a solution to this quickly as Mojave is sounding better by the minute. Happy to provide more info if this gives anyone any ideas. Appreciate the collaboration in this thread, but wish Apple would be more engaged in these types of discussions as their input would be most valuable vs the pure speculation I see from a few others in here.

I have a 2014 MacBook Air running Catalina 10.15.1 and was having the same problem with the blank screen after sleep. I removed the MCTTrigger2.kext file and this seemed to fix the issue. I haven't seen any other collateral issues from removing the file yet but only tried this last night.

Unfortunately it's not the "exact" solution. The symptom (black screen when on lock screen and never being prompted to authenticate) appears to be caused by several different things. Clearly one of them is incompatible third-party kernel extensions, usually having something to do with an external USB video card or graphics-related extension. I, on the other hand, have three computers in my fleet that are exhibiting this issue without any third-party extensions installed. In fact, I booted to Recovery and removed all extensions from /Library/Extensions and /Library/StagedExtensions via Terminal (since some are SIP protected). This still did not resolve the issue. I also cleared kext cache and various other things.

All that to say, just because the symptom is the same does not mean the root cause is the same. This is basic logic within any form of troubleshooting.

Mac mini 2018 doing same thing , have to hard reset to boot up .

Same for me on 2018 MacBook Air except I can’t even force reset as the keyboard and touch power button is non responsive. Took it to the Apple store last night and of course it started working as soon as they opened it. Ran systems check and everything came back fine. Took it home and after leaving it plugged in over night I am once again looking at a black screen, non responsive keyboard, etc. They said they haven’t heard of this problem from the new OS.

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.

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...?