"BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header)" — Catalina freezing all the time!

I have reported these problems to Apple support, but i filled in the feedback form now as well. FWIW, the Bad Magic crash only occurred once within the first 24 hours of my MPB 16", but it should not happen at all.

susanfromwinthrop wrote:

I have reported these problems to Apple support, but i filled in the feedback form now as well. FWIW, the Bad Magic crash only occurred once within the first 24 hours of my MPB 16", but it should not happen at all.

Same for me. Didn't happen again, yet.

“Bad Magic” makes me feel like those agents on Mission Impossible series.

My recommended user manual update for any Mac produced after 2018 (intro to T2 chip)

is as follows:

“Your mission Apple User, should you choose/decide to accept it, ... As always, should any of your Mac devices experience any kind of kernel crashes , the Apple support will disavow any knowledge of your kernel panics. This Mac will self-panic in five/ten seconds/minutes/days/weeks/months and will not leave a log of the worthy kind. Should you find any logs, you will be told that the panic is because of 3rd party software and your mac is just fine or you have been hallucinating”

Calmly hang up the phone and call back when you have enough patience to go thru the whole process again.

I posted earlier. Like sea206 above my Mac Pro 2019 "Bad Magic" issue seemed to be triggered when the machine went to sleep. In System Preferences > Energy Saver I checked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" and I have not had another incident in 3-4 days. This may not be ideal solution for everyone but may be a workaround for some like myself until the issue is identified and addressed with an OS update.

I also turned off all those energy saver preferences and have at least had far less incidents.... but it still happens. It happened at some point in the night. Not a big deal but annoying for such an expensive new machine.

Finally I went to a Genius Bar, my MacBook Pro 16' passed all the hardware tests. We gonna try turning off the FileVault and see how it goes for next days. The support guy told me he didn't have any other case like mine yet, He wrote my case to pass it through internal channels. Hopefully macOS Catalina 10.15.3 will fix this problem. I also showed him this thread.

Looking all the cases the problem should be related with Catalina and the T2 chip.

Is this an intentional cover up, I mean the continuous denial of the problem? Because there are even news stories from cultofmac, macrumors etc that users having t2 chip kernel panics.

After a long time, I succeeded in replacing my 15” macbook pro, Apple is going to send it in the coming weeks.

My first bad magic also occurred plugging in a hub (or drive to a hub, can't quite remember what I did first) after using my macbook pro (15" 2018 2.6Ghz, Catalina 10.15.2) unconnected on battery. thunderbolt to hubs to external drives have been a recurring problem with my machine, but this is the first bad magic error. hope it's the last.

Just had my share of BAD MAGIC as well. My 16-inch MacBook Pro was attached to a OWC Thunderbolt 3 (two HDDs, two displays among other peripherals) and one other display directly in other USB-C port. I was using the Mac lid closed, then just put the Mac to sleep and removed the USB-C cables, stuck the Mac in my backpack and headed home. Later I opened the lid and it had rebooted by itself.

I wish Apple would provide some GOOD MAGIC for a while... I had major issues with Mac Mini 2018 and replaced that with this and... oh, well.

Every solution nowadays seems to be "turn off FileVault" and T2 chip. Many users suggested the same things when I was having issues with Mac Mini acting up, but nothing worked. I just hope Apple would get their shtuff together.

True that's what the support guy told me in the Apple Store to turn off FileVault and that's whatt I did, but so far I didn't have any crash in 3 days already, and I use to have it everyday in my MacBook Pro 16 (except when I reset SMC and VRAM last for 4 days crash free). Anyway it's worth a shot at least for a temporary fix.

4 days now since my last post without any further crashes (Both Sleep/wake failure & Bad Magic). Solution for me—so far—was to uncheck "hard disks to sleep..." on battery and power adapter tabs and change both "turn display off after..." sliders to "Never" under Energy Saver. Laptop connected to power directly with remaining 3 USB-c ports connects directly to OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock and 2 LG4K monitors.

Same thing just happened to me for the first time this morning. I used my 2018 13 inch MacBook Pro all day yesterday with no issues other than it taking a few seconds longer to wake… This morning when I walked into my office and open the lid it had a blank screen and it wouldn’t respond to any of my keystrokes, power button holds, or anything like that. I plugged in the charger with no response a few times and after a while it finally made the charging tone on one of the USB-C ports. After that, I mashed the keys for a while untill the screen finally woke and I was able to login. Once I logged in the computer crashed and rebooted after a few minutes. When I logged in again I saw the unmagical “bad magic” error message. Just made an appointment for Genius Bar tomorrow -_- I too have a touchbar

That’s a test I used to do for my Imac Pro, left in on at workdays to see whether it is off or not when I come back next day to work. Because the t2 panic just shuts the machine down. When you come back you turn on and see the “Bad Magic” report.

"Uncheck "hard disks to sleep..." on battery and power adapter tabs and change both "turn display off after..." sliders to "Never" under Energy Saver. Laptop connected to power directly with remaining 3 USB-c ports connects"

As i am always on power adapter i had only changed those preferences. I tested your alternative, changing the energy preferences for the laptop on batteries mode too.

So far i have have less to no kernel panic when the unit wakes up in the morning. Note that I use active corners to put display on sleep when away and don't close the laptop screen for optimal cooling because this "fix" is kind of a fake sleep mode, you can tell touching at the laptop it's a bit warm vs cold on a complet night in sleep mode.

So that's another option, maybe better than disconnecting absolutely all my devices all nights.

Config : MBP15 2019 full specs with 2 usb-c Screens + 1 usb-c DAS