Macbook pro 16 2019 freezes randomly and restarts

Yep my previous ones would freeze/restart with gpu switch or during sleep, sometimes a bad magic crash with things plugged in. No matter what I did to those (NVRAM/SMC reset, full erase) they always suffered the issue.

I think it was a combination of bad hardware and Catalina bugs.

The latest one I got seems to have suffered from Catalina bugs with its preinstalled 10.15.3 which carried over when updating to 10.15.4 over the top of 10.15.3, but a clean install of 10.15.4 has fixed it for now. I've even applied the supplemental update and it's still good, although I'd have to note the supplemental update messed up a lot of my settings including device name & launchpad sorting.

Basically this entire situation is from inconsitency, which is a pretty bad thing to have on a computer in the first place. They need to be consistent!

If you got to 10.15.4 supplemental by updating over the top of previous macOS versions (like 10.15.1 -> 10.15.2 -> 10.15.3 -> 10.15.4) your install might be bugged. Try clean installing 10.15.4 so it isn't installed over the top of previous versions, as much of a pain that is.

Yep same for me, I bought it on initial release then all the replacements they gave me were from November 2019 until I hit my rocker and demanded one with a 2020 build date.

The 2019 build date machines suffered from two types of panic, waking from sleep (Catalina bug, affects other macs) and gpu switch (hardware bug, only affecting mbp 2019 16").

This latest 2020 build date machine only suffered a wake from sleep panic with its pre-installed 10.15.3 and me installing 10.15.4 over the top. When I clean installed 10.15.4 it hasn't had a kernel panic once. I've even left it powered on for 2 weeks straight now, shutting the lid at night and recharging as necessary just to make sure I can use it like every other mac I've owned.

I was about 16 weeks behind in my work because of all this but am now only 4 weeks behind since so many clients gave me the flick, they couldn't call me as I was on the phone to apple support most of the time (17 hours logged) trying to get a 2020 build date machine, which work fine without gpu panics as m0unt41nman pointed out. One of the jobs I took on then lost would have recovered the cost of this machine too. I have a fast self-built windows desktop but one of the main reasons I got this mbp 2019 16" was I broke my knee so couldn't sit at my desk properly, so what a joke that I then had to spend 8 hours driving my manual car to & from the repair centre when apple delivered the original one to my place (purchased through apple online).

I know 24 pages is a lot to read but I've experienced the same as m0unt41nman. Read people please. The more you post the more newcomers post, instead of reading and shortening their time with this issue. Nov 2019 -> Feb 2020 you've got a high chance of hardware issues.

Stuff I'm doing on my March 2020 build date replacement isn't crashing the macbook that was crashing my original Nov 2019 machine and subsequent replacements with a board build date of Nov 2019.

The mbp 2019 16" suffers from two types of crash if faulty, or one type of crash if not faulty. The software based crash is rectified with 10.15.4 onwards, but you must do a completely clean install of 10.15.4, no upgrades over the top of prior 10.15.x. I had a crash out the box with my 10.15.3 replacement (bad magic), but after a clean wipe and install of 10.15.4 with no update, it's been powered on for 3 weeks straight now, and I'd have to say if this were my experience in the first place I would have never found this forum.

If you're using your machine and it only seems to last 1-2 hours then freezing/restarting, you've got a faulty unit and need to get it replaced asap, it can't be simpler than that. A macbook should not be restarting like that. The best way to tell is if you do a clean install of 10.15.4 and it still restarts by opening apps, or doing heavy tasks then it's time to return it for another one.

Like I said, mine hasn't crashed for 3 weeks now, not from the cpu/gpu panic (hardware) or the bad magic crash (catalina bug with external devices plugged in), but the latter also seems to have been fixed with 10.15.4. Simple as that. "Bad magic" was even removed and replaced with a more descriptive crash log in 10.15.4.

It's not a case of apple not knowing what it is or isn't, if 10,000 of their Nov 2019 boards have 9,000 faulty units, they'd rather cycle everyone through that junk and get the 1,000 good ones in people's hands instead of calling it a day and recalling that batch, because $.

Stop wasting your time, get your unit replaced if you can't say to yourself it stays powered on for at least a week, like I can now with my March 2020 mbp 2019.

Another thing is not to be lazy and skip the clean install of 10.15.4, otherwise you'll get the bad magic crash with external devices. You'll have to wipe your machine to know if you have a unit affected by bad hardware (non stop freezing/restarting with nothing plugged in no matter what macOS version). 'Bad magic' you'll experience 10.15.1 -> 10.15.3, and also on 10.15.4 if you didn't clean install 10.15.4. Please read.

I yelled at the top of my lungs, that I'd bought a $6200 machine with $500 applecare. Something I intended to be working off the shelf and to use the $500 applecare to cover accidental damage being a work machine. Instead I went through 4 months of original and faulty replacements, until I demanded a machine with a 2020 build date instead of 2019. I also pointed out my $500 applecare was going towards the right to be able to call up apple and be on the phone to them 3-4 hours daily, and having to drive to repair centre multiple times. I kept yelling until I got what I paid $6700 total for, a working macbook pro 2019 16" and applecare to cover accidental damage, not dispute factory faults and be blamed for it. In comparison macbook air 2020 owners don't experience this and are a completely different market of users, apple really don't want a high end machine with more professional users to be faulty or their reputation will get damaged to the point of an unprofitable return.

Yep, repair/board replacement no good. Board replacements are coming from the older batches. My full macbook replacement fixed it with the March 2020 build date.

I think I found something though, on stackexchange forums. I'd made a note of it in one of my earlier comments without realising it was the cause of all this (maybe).

I always plug my charging cable & dongle in the left side, because I am right handed so don't want my mouse to bump in to the cable or dongle. I noticed on my original system and subsequent board replacements, the machine would get very hot when cable was plugged in on the left, as opposed to the right. Turns out the psu is on the right hand side. Plugging in to the left side on one of the faulty systems results in a kernel task being created to route power over to the right side of the board. For some reason on the faulty boards, the kernel task took 3-4 minutes to complete. This results in queueing kernel tasks, eventually your CPU is overcome with this endless kernel loop and panics the next time you give it a heavy task. Kernel tasks survive a reboot, which explains why once your macbook starts freezing a lot, the only way to stop that is to wipe it. On the faulty systems, plugging your charging cable in to the right side resulted in kernel tasks that only take up to 15 seconds so they complete before a queue is possible.

On my replacement system, the macbook doesn't get hotter if plugging in on the left side, and doesn't create kernel tasks that last 3-4 minutes. No idea why that is.

This could be why a lot haven't experienced the issue, some people like to plug things in on the right side and thus avoid the kernel task queue on a faulty system. Some people don't have a faulty system and the kernel task queue doesn't happen at all. It does mean there are users out there though with a faulty board who will eventually plug their charge cable on the left side and trigger the endless kernel task queue to route power, and be where a lot of people in this forum are at now.

Basically, if you do have a system that keeps restarting, completely wipe it, and only use the right hand side ports to charge. Of course this isn't a fix, but at least it'll make work on a machine built for work usable till you can get a replacement, and when it comes time to demo the fault to apple support, start charging with the left ports. 👍

Although the issue exists on other mac systems, it seems certain MBP 2019 16" units are affected by this severly, other batches not so much.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find-cause-of-high-kernel-task-cpu-usage?answertab=active#tab-top

I went through multiple logicboard repairs experiencing the above, I finally got a full replacement in March that didn't exhibit any of the issues I had previously. I ran it for 3 weeks just closing the lid & recharging but not shutting down, then restarted it myself. 3 weeks. Since then I've gone days at a time without shutdown and it's me that's shut the machine down myself.

I noticed on the prior faulty units, even in the brief moments it did stay powered on without a freeze & restart, they were very noisey. Fans always full speed, macbook always hot. This latest replacement has been running like a dream. Quiet as, cool as, fan mainly unheard of, no freezing and no restarts.

Unfortunately there is another OS bug floating around that causes a lot of macOS devices with T2 chip to restart when woken from sleep, or for the screen to remain black and user has to force restart to escape. This bug is also a huge offender on the faulty mbp 16" 2019's. I've experienced it once on this machine just last week. Upon waking the machine the screen remained black, and my touchbar had 'Mirror Display' and 'Extend Display' options as though I had a screen plugged in to the machine, when I had nothing plugged in at all.

Under Energy Saver preferences, I have power nap enabled, graphics switching on auto, put hard drives to sleep is enabled, display set to turn off after 10mins. No issues at all.

Compared to my first faulty unit and subsequent faulty units, out the box, with no software installed they would restart every half hour in the middle of use, IE freeze opening an app, freeze loading a web page. Then either restart or me have to force restart to escape. Unable to wake from sleep with a restart or constant black screen, every time when waking from sleep. Fans full speed and system hot the whole time. Basically an unusable system.

If you'd like the same smooth experience as me, I suggest getting a full replacement, and not a logicboard repair.

Yeah the situation sucks big time. In my case I'd broken my knee so couldn't sit at my workstation properly, so opted for the 16". Had to drive my manual car across town on apple's request to get logicboard repairs, even though I'd ordered it online and had it delivered by mail. For the replacement, they sent a courier out to pick it up. So how rude of apple. I guess yes, I had to get the repairs first due to their crazy if this -> then that support structure. :/

My process is always to do PRAM/SMC reset and a full wipe of nvme drive. Like selecting 'delete volume' and then erasing the disk, then doing an Internet Recovery instead of recovering from partition on drive. It's important to upgrade your system from System Preferences before the Internet Recovery to get your partition updated also, as Internet Recovery matches the partition version. If your system is too buggy to do the upgrade, then Internet Recovery -> upgrade -> Internet Recovery to get a fresh install of the latest macOS, instead of installing versions over the top of each other.

My first machine was trash. Freeze and restart every half hour in the middle of use. Freeze every time waking from sleep. 10.14.1 -> 10.14.2 with that one. Ran very hot. I followed the above setup steps numerous times.

My next machine was 10.14.2 - 10.14.3 and froze 'here and there', I'd get about 3-4 hours use average then get one, opening an app, or playing a youtube video for example. Video editing triggered it almost every time. Every other wake from sleep the system would restart, but not all. Ran very hot. I followed the above steps in bold for setup.

The machine after that was the same as above, 10.14.3. I followed the above steps in bold for setup.

Now my replacement, 10.14.3 -> 10.14.4 has been completely fine. Quiet and cool. Hasn't frozen once. Have had one bad magic restart but all T2 machines are getting that on occasion (software bug).

As much as a pain as it is, I highly suggest upgrading your system to 10.14.4 (Internet Recovery downloads the same macOS version on your partition, so upgrade is important), then follow the above bolded steps to a T. Your issue sounds different and could well be a software bug on an iteration of macOS that is full of bugs, but the right OS install steps fix it.

People who already have issues and are simply upgrading over the top of earlier macOS versions are not going to stop having issues. The disk needs to be fully wiped, and Internet Recovery installing the latest macOS fresh.

From what I've experienced, it seems to be a mixture of the intel cpu & amd gpu.

If you check out this article, it explains why Apple finally ditched intel for ARM based macs in the future (also a worrying thing for us - we own the last intel gen of macbooks, so support will diminish quickly)

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-skylake-why-apple-left/

It would seem although the final crash is related to the amd gpu, it's the buggy intel cpu that places the amd gpu in a sort of 'unknown power state' which triggers a kernel panic.

I believe Apple have silently refreshed the amd gpu to one that isn't triggered by intel's bugginess. Once the intel cpu bugs out it causes a lot of random crashes, but mainly to do with amd gpu/touchbar/sleep.

You are right though, Apple has a real problem. A situation not really caused by them, but really poor support that doesn't help much either.

In my case I've called up to pay them more money for the newer, less buggy mbp 2019 16" but now find they've lost my AppleCare+ over my multiple replacements for faulty out the box equipment.

There's a few issues floating around out there that result in a system restart. This thread was started based on a hardware fault in mbp 2019 16" that others have misunderstood and joined in for 'bad magic' sleep restart errors.

Essentially if you take the macbook 2019 16" out the box and it's freezing every 10-20mins and impossible to open any apps without freezing & restarting, you've got one of the lemons. If it freezes waking from sleep, that's a different issue and no where near as annoying as a machine you can't work on at all.

Best way to test if you've got a good one - don't turn it off. Just shut the lid to hibernate when done. My record was 3.5 weeks with a buttery smooth experience the whole time, then I eventually powered it off myself to give it a break. The occasional freeze I've had since were waking from sleep, a totally different software/OS related issue. The faulty machines I had were freezing without doing anything, nothing plugged in, often enough to not even make it passed the 20min mark.

It sounds like you did have a hardware affected lemon but are now in the clear. It's basically impossible to achieve a 'buttery smooth experience' on one of the lemons. See what your record is for leaving the macbook powered on and only hibernating. That's a usual way to use one of these isn't it?

Here the same problem. Sporadic kernel panics. After I bought MBP 16,1 in Feb this year, had a panic once per 2 weeks or so. Recently 4-5 times per day, in all, normal, safe modes, even in the recovery mode. Reinstalling Catalina, 10.15.6, did not help either. I was able to replicate kernel problem logs while running Geekbench 5, but it did not crash, just 50+ logs...Not sure how the warranty works and what has to be evidenced to ask Apple or a vendor for a replacement. Indeed, paying CHF 2'900 it is a disappointment for 5 crashes per day. Especially, after I had a MBP late 2011 for 9 years, changed logic board once, but all worked fine...

What options do we have if we want an old good stable Macs?

OS: Catalina 10.15.6

Model Name: MacBook Pro

 Model Identifier: MacBookPro16,1

 Processor Name: 8-Core Intel Core i9

 Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz

 Memory: 16 GB

GPU: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M

 VRAM (Total): 4 GB

Yeah I've had a few logicboard replacements, followed by a full machine replacement that finally works. As you say Scott, it might not crash but it runs extremely hot at anything more than a browser being opened.

This series of macbooks are probably only going to last 3-4 years then be toast, I can kind of tell because this 2019 mbp gets boiling hot for hardly any reason, but my 2016 doing the exact same stuff doesn't. The fans get so loud I can't make a call through the macbook without myself and caller saying 'huh!'...'what!' cause the machine is so loud.

This is a great example of what happens when a company shifts focus and budget on dealing with a human pandemic instead of their own products, since these machines were released right as covid hit. Joke.

Oh yeah and every time I open an app that activates the GPU (like photoshop), the screen goes black for a few seconds during switch-over. Have formatted my system to get rid of this but it's now a thing ever since 10.15.6...can't win with these machines, $7000 well spent.

Apple also forgot to transfer my applecare from one of my previous mbp 2019's to the latest replacement, forced me to pay for it again. How shocking is that.

Yo AudioB3...signed up yesterday, made a post that's very specific to my complaint I sent to Apple in their crash log report yesterday. No activity on this thread for 3 months but a very specific comment from a new user account that signed up around the same time I sent my crash log report to Apple. Nothing suss.

That's all good but, since I took a date stamped screenshot of what I said to Apple, it'll look good in my case along with all the other evidence of Apple gaslighting me for complaining about 3 faulty $7000 machines in a row.

Four machines to get a working one, which meant spending $7000 and four months fighting Apple for something I should have had working straight off the shelf. "Forgot" to transfer my AppleCare to final machine even though it was done for previous three, had to pay twice...$900 on AppleCare when it's supposed to be $450. Owning the laptop for a year, that means I've only used it for 8 months. Overheats at basically anything. Not built to last.

Instead of dealing with the situation, Apple spent the whole time trying to antagonize me, to have given up would have meant spending $7000 for a useless lump of metal. By not giving up, I've ended up with so much evidence Apple are gonna have a cry when they're legally backed in to a corner for what they've done here.

See you in court Apple.

Don't like complaints? Sell stuff that works. Sell something broken? Sort out the people that keep your company going, don't gaslight them after spending so much money. Absolutely disgusting.

I'll keep using your hardware too because I know how much I annoy you now, everyone I see when using this macbook, I tell them about this and show them this thread.

Must have cost your company tens of thousands in sales now putting potential new customers off your lousy products. Don't like it? Sort yourselves out. 😜

Macbook Pro 2019 16" GPU related freeze and force restart when sleeping, Catalina 10.5.2 24/01/20:

It also sounds like a jet plane is preparing for take off whilst playing duke3D, 30 y.o game 🤣😎

Just happened to me with with the 16-inch Macbook Pro an external TB monitor connected ... really weird, it just instantly turned off with no warning, not even doing anything particularly CPU intensive with it, battery full and plugged in ... never had something like that happen before with previous Macbook Pros ...