M1 Mac Mini, Displays wont turn on after wake from sleep

Just so everyone knows, I just called Apple Support today (12/13/20) for my two-day old M1 Mini that was having this problem. The person said that Apple is aware, many are having this problem, and that it should be fixed in a software update once they can solve it.

Great find. Hopefully others can benefit from the info. Additionally, I continue to see posts from folks experiencing problems when using conversion cables. USC-C to DisplayPort, USB-C to DVI, etc.

I was happy when pressing a key brought my monitor to life. Even better, I discovered yesterday that moving my mouse was now triggering the system to wake up as well. It wouldn't do that with a wire mouse and now it is working with Bluetooth.

macOS 11.1 has fixed the issue for me. I am able to bring back display from sleep and from power off (both of which didn't work previously). Using USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter to connect to LG 4k 60hz monitor over HDMI.

Well, it seems I may have spoken too soon. While the wake-from-sleep problem has gotten much, much better, it is still happening on occasion, and as Pearsnet stated, it won't even recognize my second monitor, and I have to restart.

I guess I will try the "separate spaces" hack mentioned above. I never used different spaces until after reading this thread, so it could very well be connected to the spaces. I guess we'll see.

> My understanding was that 11.2 was supposed to address the sleep issue but it didn't work in my case.

The "fix" was limited to:

• External displays may show a black screen when connected to a Mac mini (M1, 2020) using an HDMI to DVI converter

Abandon all hope - the "monitor won't wake from sleep" issue has plagued the 2018 Intel Mac mini since its introduction with no fix in sight (I have three with the issue). All my previous Mac minis (2007, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012) do not have the issue. It also occurs across all brands of monitor and connection types though direct HDMI connections fare best and are rarely mentioned as suffering from the issue.

As the issue occurs with both Intel and M1 Mac minis, it would not appear to be hardware related, but software (ie macOS). But after two years, Apple has made no progress in resolving the issue. Just lodge a bug report and tickle support, but don't hold your breath waiting for a fix.

That is what was happening to me - I think the best work around for now is to go to System Preferences -> Energy Saver and set Display to never turn off. Screensaver will run. At night turn off monitor at the monitor.

Failure to wake up after sleeping also happens virtually using Apple's "Share Screen..." facility built into the Finder. The fix is to resize the shared window, and it wakes up. Trying to find a hardware cause is probably why Apple has been hard pressed to track this problem down.

Disabling sleep is not a fix, it is putting a bandaid on a dirty wound. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean the problem is gone.

Disabling sleep - is leaving the monitor on 24/7 the best fix? There were no issues with my Intel based laptop in terms of waking up the monitors by tapping any key on the bluetooth keyboard...

Ok, I hope it gets fixed. Until then, try another dongle. Or better, a monitor that doesn’t need one. Good luck.

When you have two monitors but only one wakes up from sleep:

System Preferences / Mission Control / De-Select “Displays have separate Spaces” / Log Out / Log In

This was driving me CRAZY!

Sadly it doesn't fix the problem. Hoping that the spaces workaround fixes it for me. So annoying.

I just updated to 11.1 and it killed my second monitor. Now it won't even recognize it! 🙄

11.5.2 update did not solve the problem for me and I now believe that it is a hardware issue.