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Screensaver comes on randomly and prevents use in Big Sur and M1

We have a new MacBook Pro M1 with Big Sur 11.0.1 and already in a half dozen instances the screensaver has come on in the midst of using the computer, despite having screensavers turned off. When the screensaver appears randomly, the computer becomes unusable and has to be restarted to function again.

Anyone else have this issue?

Interestingly, I am the guest user of this MBP and this started to happen on my GF's side after I once turned the screensaver on in my partition. I have since turned my screensaver setting off but it still happens. I think this should provide a clue to the engineers, because it only happens in the main user partition.

MacBook

Posted on Nov 24, 2020 8:39 AM

Top-ranking reply

Michael Tchong Author

Level 1

75 points

Posted on Nov 28, 2020 6:51 PM

Hi Grant, while you insist that Apple engineers cannot be reached by posting here, I do want to remind you that in 2013 Apple acquired Topsy, a social media monitoring firm to listen in on social media conversations and parse through the entire web to monitor sentiment. I can assure you that while individual engineers do not read these forums, product marketing generates reports of overheard bugs that cause negative sentiment. 🙂

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179 replies

Mar 10, 2021 6:46 AM in response to Michael Tchong

I added two admin users to a brand new M1 with the latest Big Sur. I never enabled the screen saver. It is a very serious bug as I am no logged out of a conversation that will be lost as I'm forced to reboot.

jamieoo

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2021 9:58 AM in response to Michael Tchong

A user, Pemby, posted a fix that solved the issue for me. (I'm using a headless 2020 M1 Mini on Big Sur 11.2.3).

I think I found the solution. I noticed an energy saver plist with a UID appended to it.

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.{UID}.plist

In addition to the default

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

Reading the default plist with my correct system settings gave me

{

"AC Power" = {

"Automatic Restart On Power Loss" = 1;

DarkWakeBackgroundTasks = 1;

"Disk Sleep Timer" = 10;

"Display Sleep Timer" = 0;

"System Sleep Timer" = 0;

"Wake On LAN" = 1;

};

SystemPowerSettings = {

"Update DarkWakeBG Setting" = 1;

};

}

Reading the plist with the UID gave me

{

"AC Power" = {

PrioritizeNetworkReachabilityOverSleep = 0;

"Sleep On Power Button" = 1;

"Standby Enabled" = 0;

TCPKeepAlivePref = 1;

TTYSPreventSleep = 1;

};

}

So I added the `"System Sleep Timer" = 0 and "Display Sleep Timer" 0` by the following linesp.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.{UID}.plist "AC Power" -dict-add "System Sleep Timer" 0

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.{UID}.plist "AC Power" -dict-add "Display Sleep Timer" 0

Apr 27, 2021 6:55 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

In the current release (I have 11.2.3 now) you don't have the screen saver issue anymore. Instead randomly, my external screen gets black for ~1sec, but comes back on automatically. Sometimes after going to sleep, I can't wake it up with the key stroke. To fix that, I unplug and replug the USB-C cable to the monitor.

Mr T

Level 1

4 points

Apr 27, 2021 6:58 AM in response to GrandSwiss

Sounds more like a USB-C / external monitor / cable issue than a software one. If it's not the cable/connector/monitor then it's going to be more serious & possibly a hardware issue. However, not really one to be dealt with here which is an old discussion about a now-fixed screensaver issue.

Apr 29, 2021 11:05 PM in response to Mr T

>old discussion about a now-fixed screensaver issue.

Unfortunately, not so fast.

One week old Mac Mini M1,

Big Sur 11.3 (arrived today!)

Single user, no fast switching, no screensaver allowed - same issue: unkillable and not bypassable screensaver (and its ugly!), need to reboot every 20 mins :( And I was hoping to replace my 2009 Mac Pro cause that one reboots once per day, lol. Probably I'll return it, still have 3 days left to return.

I run Mac Mini headless, through Apple's Screen Sharing app - that may be the trigger.

Apr 30, 2021 12:22 AM in response to Mike Placid

If the bug is really back (I can't tell as I updates to 11.3 only this morning), in the past to circumvent the bug and not being forced to boot, I did the followng: configure a hot corner eg in the lower left corner with the action "Put display to sleep"

Dec 30, 2020 12:07 PM in response to codrinstefan2103

I think you’re right. I disabled the fast user switching and have left my computer and and so far it has not gone in to screensaver mode. Thanks for the tip!