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

That's the whole point - I want my MBA 13 M1 to go to sleep to limit electricity usage/be more eco as well as ensure the hardware lasts as long as possible although with no fans and virtually no heating on the M1 it should not shorten life span of my mac significantly as opposed to overheating Intel ones.

Someone suggested ticking then unticking Mirror Displays in Displays in System Preferences and apparently it solved this problem for them (it was for older Macs though). I did that and since yesterday am getting 100% all monitors wake ups - will report when get a failed one again.

My running workaround is to disable sleep. Sleep does not work the same was as previous models - I've had several minis over the years. As this unit has a pretty lower power draw, I'm betting it's not a huge difference, it would be interesting to find the power specs. Also - it seems to make a difference if the screens are plugged into thunderbolt docs vs usb3 adapters. There are lots of glitches like this one with the new hardware, and this is one of them. Keep posting and sharing with Apple - it's their job to fix this. Yes, we'll have to wade through the Apple apologists that keep pretending that the 'holding it wrong' argument is valid, but that's fine. Right now I've disabled sleep.

As Apple currently only makes 1 display in the > $6000 CDN price point range, if they aren't going to be able to support sleep with third party monitors, this is a real problem for all mac mini owners.The OP is looking for support I think. Have you encountered this issue? What was your solution?

@hcsitas

I loose all my windows arrangements on my 5 external monitors plus have to reopen all unfinished work when am shutting down. If there was no sleep functionality I would live with it but if there's one that was working before that's not a solution for me then. Multiply millions of users that disable sleep and keep their devices running and you'll get the idea of how much electricity is wasted as well. If there was no problem with this functionality I'd not be wasting my time talking to you here.

@hcsitas - not as entertaining as your unhelpful replies to the first question asked here.

@others - so far not a single time the problem reoccured when ticked and then unticked the 'Display mirror' checkbox in display settings.

Then you should stop contradicting yourself and ask a simple question - why you're still on this forum? Join the millions by disabling sleep on your mac, stop wasting your time here and allow others to continue working towards solving the actual problem.

But it IS a problem. I LiKE the sleep option. I use it every day. Whether it is "old tech and unnecessary" is beside the point. It is tech that is installed in a brand new computer and a brand new version of the OS, and expecting it to work correctly isn't exactly a wildly unrealistic expectation.

Or just turn my monitor off, then back on, for the two times (or so) a week that the problem occurs. Takes a whole two seconds, and is faster than shutting down and starting up, PLUS I still get to use the sleep function.

And in the meantime, I will definitely continue to bug Apple to have a machine that I paid over a thousand bucks for to work correctly.

But thank you for all of your concern. It means a lot to to me. It helps me sleep better at night.

As far as “owned up to it”, I am not sure what you are looking for. Based upon my posting here, an Apple tech reached out to me about a month ago and asked for my assistance in troubleshooting a few different circumstances to help them better understand a real world example.

In my case, I had a monitor that refused to wake up 100% of the time. I purchased a new (different brand) monitor that wakes up 100% of the time. The tech sent me an internal Apple logging tool, and I walked through various combinations of different cables attached to the two different monitors.

Indisputable conclusion was that the problem was not with the Mac mini, but was with the monitor. Or, best case, the monitors driver.

So, from my perspective, Apple has been diligent in trying to figure out what the issue is. And, it does not appear to be be the mini that is the problem.

My point exactly, but yours had better detail. It confirms what we know already, that support from the monitor manufacturers/sellers is non-existent, hence all the blame-traffic here.

That said, Apple's definitely at fault for not qualifying their dual-monitor claim with monitor brands that meet it all the way. After all, monitor manufacturers are not claiming dual-monitor functionality, Apple is. So I do sympathize with numerous complaints here, at the very least they've been mislead with a feature that isn't up to snuff (and probably never will).

For what it is worth, my monitor that would never wake up (without power off/on) was an Alienware (Dell) monitor. So, a bit of a common thread. Once I purchased my LG monitor there has been no issues.

I've got 3 identical Dell 2515H monitors which worked fine for over 3 years using the same HDMI cables on my MacBook Pro 17" (died one day), MacBook Pro 15" Intel 2019 (sold due to an upgrade to 16") and MacBookPro 16" Intel 5500M 8GB 2020 (sold due to overheating and loud fans issues once one external monitor was connected to it) on at least 3 previous Mac OS X. They still work fine on my spare MabBook Air i7 8GB from 2011 with Sierra 13.13.3.

Yes, but that’s not enough to pin blame on Apple especially as Dell is on record for not supporting Apple connection issues. As such, other than disabling sleep or shutting down, all you have is this discussion sadly...

I have also issues about the awaking of my monitor (I have a M1 mac mini and a Dell 32 monitor pluged with hdmi cable). But I found a way to wake it up all the time. Maybe it could give you a hint on how to solve the problem (for you and apple ingeneer!).

When it goes on sleep, the screen goes back to the login window. If I only touch the keyboard or move the mouse, it will never wake up. I first touch the keyboard (then the computer wake up) then I mouve the mouse rapidely so the cursor inflates. My hypothesis is that, somewhere, somehow, the computer need some change in the image signal. I can write a phrase in the password space, I can move my mouse slowly forever, but my screen won’t turn on. However, if I move it fast for long enough, it works. Somehow, the treshold specified somewhere is reached and the computer send the signal to the screen. So I guess that it’s a software problem (hope it is not in the controler chips - probably not if you experience the same kind of problem with usb-c output).

Nevertheless, despite my confidence in waking up my mac, it’s still pretty annoying... I’m use to barely touch the mouse for the screen to turn on...

Same experience here. Even though both my keyboard and mouse are wireless, I typically have to touch the keyboard to wake the screen - even with sleep mode disabled.

I'm using a product called MacID that lets your phone unlock your computer which takes any pain of this away.

Long time users of the platform will have some adapting to do.

This reminds me very much of when Apple changed the appletv remote so only one button would wake the device, instead of all the buttons. It's fine, but it doesn't pass the 'explain this to your grandparents' test.

This ones not a problem for me, but will be for many users. If you're used to moving a mouse to wake the machine (every Windows PC I've ever used does this) - this will contribute to a negative user experience.