Macbook Pro 16" and Thunderbolt 27" Display

Thanks for the workaround. I'll try that the next time this happens. I have an Apple-branded thunderbolt adapter so it's Apple all-the way, yet the Thunderbolt fails to wake up about 75% of the time.

Apple had better fix this. Nothing like going from a 5 year old laptop where everything just works to their flagship 16" and finding this kind of annoyance.

The problem is even worse when I am in the office where I have a Dell U3415W.

When I wake from sleep, the external monitor is completely washed out. I have to unplug it and put the laptop to sleep several times before the monitor will respond.

The only option is for me to leave my screen saver running indefinitely while the screen is locked (No screen sleep). Working at a sustainability engineering company makes this a pretty awful solution.

to get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display.

This query is only sent at certain times:

• at startup

• at wake from sleep

• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go

• on invoking Option-(Detect Display) button in Displays preferences

so try doing some of those things and see if the display comes alive.

Modern Displays with multiple ports are sometimes busy scanning the other ports, looking for an input, and miss the query from the Mac. They need to pay attention to the port you are actually using, or they will miss the query.

Some displays have On-Screen Display settings that can be used to tell the display a computer is attached on a certain port, or a certain port should be highest priority. Changing those may make your display more responsive.

Some displays include their own private "sleep" settings for the display alone. This can allow the display to enter its own sleep mode, on top of the Mac's not sending it data. A display that is sleeping on its own cannot respond to the Mac's query, and will stay dark.

Apple support will not fix this unless you add your complaint and let them know this is a problem for you. They do not troll these user-to-User forums looking for more problems.

You should also Contact Support (you can use the Contact Support link at the top right of every forum page), and work with them to at least document the problem you are having. They may even have some more fixes. This may help you in future, but it also helps everyone by letting them know there is a problem.

I have the same setup and the same issue. I have contacted Apple support to register my +1. What I did find was changing my display brightness from a magic keyboard woke up the Thunderbolt display. Since I am using the gigabit ethernet port on the display it is really annoying having to replug the adapter - so I am glad for this work around.

Monitor didn't wake up and I tried the Displays -> option + Detect Displays several times and nothing happened. I ended up putting the laptop back to sleep and waking it up again and the monitor came back.

I went via the chat, but never asked anything too technical. Since I have found out that changing brightness wakes the monitor I have not really noticed this issue anymore. Feels like it happens less often but who knows.

Did Apple report that they had recorded the issue as a problem when you chatted with them? All I want to do is make them aware of the issue. Doesn't seem possible without a phone call.

As for the brightness workaround, do you keep the Displays pref open so you can adjust the brightness slider if the monitor won't wake up?

Same issue for me... the MacBook Pro doesn't recognize that it has the display connected to it (LG UltraFine 5K Display). This is usually when it wakes from an extended sleep. I have to restart the MacBook Pro, disconnecting and reconnecting the cable doesn't seem to help. It is connected via the Thunderbolt 3 cable that came with the display (uses one cable to charge and feed video). I have the display set as my primary display with menu and the MacBook Pro is the secondary display. Prior to this display I had the original Apple Thunderbolt Display that I connected with an adapter. Same thing was happening, so I thought it was the display and adapter, which is why I purchased the new display. I also changed the cable to the shorter Apple Thunderbolt cable because the LG supplied cable was too long. I did contact Tech Support and let them know what was going on. I have a case number now. Base on what I read and the suggestions they made (resetting SMC, PRAM, new user, etc), I knew it would not fix the actual issue. Waiting on a software/firmware fix.

kg23 wrote:

... I tried Chat support and they disconnected on me the moment I asked a technical question. ...

I was not on the call, so all I can do is go by what you write.

And what you wrote implies they disconnected, not referred you to another source and said you needed help beyond what they were able to provide.

Yep, got a case number and sent them this thread.

> "As for the brightness workaround, do you keep the Displays pref open so you can adjust the brightness slider if the monitor won't wake up? "

I have an apple magic keyboard with brightness controls on the F1/F2 keys, so I just tap one of those. I find it interesting that the external keyboard controls the external display (I didn't set that up), and the builtin keyboard (touchbar) controls the laptop display brightness. If you could figure out how to change the external display brightness from the touchbar then that might work as a workaround. (Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQJNYT6-ZA)

Not exactly on topic, but I have a Thunderbolt 27" Display and I'm considering getting a MBP16, but will only do so if the external ports like Firewire and USB still work with external storage.

Thanks!

MB

FWIW, I'm in the same Macbook Pro 16" and Thunderbolt 27" Display, latest OSX (10.15.2) and I have to unplug the connector to fix it, but the screen brightness tricked works now that I've seen that here

In this case, It may be that displays on the ThunderBolt-3 <--> ThunderBolt-2 adapter come up later than convenient for display recognition.