M1 Mac mini display issue

Hi Everyone,

@elliottja: I live in Hungary, and of course we have different laws here. I called Apple Support in 3 days when I purchased my Mac Mini and faced the magenta boxes issue (and auto-restarting just after logging in). They strongly encouraged me to ask a replacement (or money back) from the reseller, here. The only problem was that I bought my Mini as a company, not as an invidual, and according to the law you cannot ask money back if you are a company. I took it to the service and they ran a lot of diagnostics and stuffs like that, and they couldn't find anything wrong.

I tried 3 different monitors with 3 different HDMI cables (with all the possible combinations) and I saw the magenta boxes (more like lines for me) every time, and was very hard to log in using one monitor of the three.

I hope there will be some solution in the near future as the hardware performance is stunning. In the meantime I work on my super stable 2012-mid Macbook Air on a big screen. :)

All the best for you, Guyz!

As I have mentioned before, there in no point of exchanging Mac mini, either you wait it out for Apple fix it, or if you can't wait, return your mini for refund.

This looks more and more like software issue.

BTW; After changing my HDMI cables, my mini is still behaving :)

No pink squares so far - restart, shutdown, waking up, etc;

All good here... :)

Just spoke to Apple via online live chat - asked to be put through to a Senior Adviser which they did and I made it clear that I didn't want a return (as need a computer) or exchange (as hasn't helped anyone else) and asked when there would be a software/firmware fix. They said Engineering are looking into it, so here's hoping that they are aware of and actively working on this issue, and not just trying to close it down

Just to update, the problem actually doesn't come back even though the browser gets closed, I can open a browser, close it and then go about my day without the pink blocks showing up again, but after i reboot or shutdown, the problem then comes back again until i open up a browser.

Same. My problems are three-fold:

(1) Monitors are not waking up reliably. One or both are glitching on wake-up. Not getting login prompt and having to ctrl+comm+eject to restart

(2) Single and Dual monitors are not registering properly, even with the recommended (archaic) DVI & VGA setup I found online.

(3) not able to connect HDMI to HDMI.

(4) The intermittent pink-block problem that goes away after restarting.

(5) Losing my menu bar (left side) - disappearing and locking up.

Not sure how to remedy, but ctrl+comm+eject seems to be working ok.

I think everyone needs to chill a little here. So we have a common issue but at the moment the computer seems to function just fine for me. Lets see if there is a simple software fix. I would still take a screenshot and log the issue with the techs.

Also suggesting people just chill they will fix it eventually. To increase the changes google 'apple file bug report' and file a bug report with them. They won't respond most likely but the more reports they get, the higher priority it will hopefully get (if it hasn't already gotten one).

I am seeing the same problem with my mac mini M1 8gb.

I see pink squares when logging in, which disappear after logging in.

I have a 1080p ASUS monitor.

I connect to it via HDMI.

The operating system is macOS Big Sur 11.1 (20C69)

I have a feeling this is happening because the mac mini is not optimized to work with low resolution monitors (there are no macbooks with such low resolution in the apple product line). In addition to these problems, the fonts on a 1080p monitor look terrible.

Has anyone tried changing the monitor to 4k?

Has anyone tried connecting a 4k monitor via USB-C?

Are you experiencing the same problems?

Yes, can confirm that pink squares are back on final 11.2 but for me only on the login screen. After login they immediately go away. Also noticed if my LG UltraWide is connected with dp-usbc cable the system cannot go to sleep, have to use Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off.

For those with the issue still on 11.2 did it seem different? I got it only once so far on 11.2, and it was only 2 pink spots for about 10 seconds. So it was way less spots and went away faster than before with 11.1. (On a m1 mini - 16gb ram)

It still not fixed ........

The pink box-issue still persists here with Big Sur 11.2.....

And I'm now having another weird problem.. I had HDR turned on, but suddenly the image was reverted to the default dull, not so vivid image. And now if I click HDR off it dispalys like it was before HDR selected!!

This happened also once on 11.0

Yes, I encountered this problem. My mac is connected with the hdmi cable to a Philips 276e monitor. The problem occurs sporadically and disappears after a few minutes after switching on. Sometimes it is very loud and annoying and I have noticed that it fades when the monitor is turned off and on. Currently, however, I have not solved the problem. tanks

It would be nice if life were that simple wouldn't it! How about people that traded in their previous computer to buy this one. "Just returning it" is really not that simple then is it? What are you meant to do? Not have one?

For what it's worth I haven't seen the issue since connecting a second screen. Weird but true. I have little to no faith in this issue getting fixed although I'm quietly hoping that it will. At this point I think this thread has pretty much run it's course. It's just full of "me too's" or "I stood on one foot file switching the machine on and it seems to have fixed it for me".

Bottom line, this is a revision 1 product and I don't expect to keep it anything like as long as I normally would. As long as it has some trade-in value in 12 months time and doesn't die completely before then, then it's good enough for me. Outside of this issue and the really limiting amount of ports (which we're kind of used to with Apple), it's otherwise a pretty stellar little machine.

This is exactly what I did.

In reality the pink squares I'm sometimes getting didn't bother me enough to return the Mini.

They only show up during and right after boot, but never when you're actually using it.

So in practice it's only a minor issue for me.

I use my Mini daily for many hours. This without any major issues.

If one day the pink squares are being fixed with an update: great! If not my computer will still be perfectly useable.

(It does drain the battery of my magic keyboard/trackpad too fast though. When I used them on my Mac Pro I could go on for months, now the batteries are drained after just a couple of weeks max. That's however not related to this thread, I think it's the bluetooth.)

FYI - I'm not seeing squares anymore. However, I am having to reset my displays almost every unsleep to have access to my app toolbars. Otherwise, they disappear and I don't have access to app functionality. As long as I open display settings and toggle options, it resets... It's weird workaround, but it works.