MacOS Big Sur freezes, pink screen and restart

Hey guys. I too, have been having this problem.

-THE ISSUE-

-The issue has been intermittent since purchase, and completely spontaneous which led me to hold off on even notifying them of the issue. (Hoping a quick update would address this issue by now, which none have)

-Can happen once in a week or even a month. Very infrequent.

-Not attributed to any sort of activity on the computer (nothing tied to load, can happen when nothings running and idle on desktop etc.)

-I found out that it can be reproducible, almost every time, it will crash when initiating shut down or restart!!!!

I’m sure none of us shut down our M1’s..

This was found when I was shutting down/restarting to install some special apps after reinstalling.

Initiate shutdown and spastically move your cursor, you will soon see the cursor freeze as the computer is getting ready to shut down. This is the point where it will take a few seconds then crash. (save all your work before obviously because it won’t load previous state due to crashing)

-APPLE STORE-

So ultimately I have been troubleshooting this for a while. After full reinstalls twice, verifying and troubleshooting disks, clearing NVRAM and SMC, and updating to latest OS X, I deduced this to be a hardware issue. I finally called Apple who made me do it all again while on call with them. Ultimately they deduced the same.

They told me to bring it back for an exchange. I asked for a plain refund. On the phone they said sure and stated they would refund me no questions asked....when I got to the store they would not refund me as I’m 3-4 months into ownership, despite the phone rep saying I would have no issues.

After requesting a manager and having a long discussion over the history of the issue and how sporadic it is, still they would not allow me to do anything other than an exchange.

They said the history of the issue doesn’t matter if it wasn’t documented. It would’ve been best for me to at least call in for them to document the issue within the first time of it happening, for me that was within weeks of ownership. This I can admit was my mistake as I only brought this up last week. To have logged history of the issue over time wouldn’t have brought me such hassle.

(Of course this is contingent on if this happens to you early enough in the first place, and you catch it, since it’s so spontaneous)

Funny enough I was told to buy a new replacement laptop on Apple’s website at the store on their own kiosk because they had none in stock at the store. This online purchase would act as the exchange before they would refund me the one I’m returning.....I told them how can I do that if my Apple Card is maxed out. The manager came back and quickly took over from the regular sales person and refunded me completely for my broken M1, and said have a good day.

I walked out right after that and didn’t purchase the replacement in front of them. I think the regular sales guy was going to come back and make me buy the replacement? Idk. Not sure if they let it go finally, and said screw it we’ll just refund him, or because it was so busy, they forgot that I hadn’t purchased the replacement yet. I’m not sure whether they will order me on their own merit the replacement that I specified (a base M1 Air). Receiving only a refund receipt at that moment leads me to believe they did not/can not just charge me and order the replacement.

I think I’m in the clear.

Anyway, I got my refund and will probably buy the next rendition of the M1. The laptop felt way too much of a beta for my uses.

So three weeks later, I have some insights. `first of all it seems that the "connector" that used to connect several cables to my computer was old, and overheating. So I changed it. These incidents reduced considerably to once a day. then recently I also realized that the cable connecting my laptop to the computer was also a problem. When I do not have my laptop connected to the external screen I do not get this problem. So it could either be the connecting cable or the external screen that is a problem.

I figured out what I'm doing that is causing my crashes. To give credit where credit is due, one of my sons suggested this as a remote possibility, and I merely tested it out...

By trial and error I discovered my pink-screen crashes are ALL about sequence of connecting things up:

(a) it never happens when my computer is not connected to the monitor;

(b) it never happens when I awaken my MBA, and then connect the sleeping monitor to my MBA (via Apple adapter);

(c) it always happens, in less than an hour, if I connect the sleeping monitor to the MBA (via adaptor) and then awaken my sleeping MBA.

This has now been reported to Apple engineering department, along with the lengthy error message the computer generated when it crashed.

My monitor is HP f2 24-inch (23.8 inch). To run, it must be plugged into the wall. I keep it plugged in and I never turn it off, just let it sleep. Similarly, I do not turn off my MBA; I just close it and let it sleep.

Hope this may be of help to at least some of the folks out there.

I found the solution to my pink screen problem. I had my first M1 replaced but the issue continued with the new machine. I took it in to the Apple Store again and they guessed it was a problem with the connection to the external monitor. They gave me an Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter and a Belkin UltraHD High Speed 4K HDMI Cable and no more pink screens since then.

I had tried multiple external monitors and multiple adapters on both M1 machines beforehand, but it seems the Apple adapter and the Belkin cable did the trick.

Took it to the genius bar here. They fixed it. Reinstalled my OS (+ TM Mac up). They claimed to have never heard of the problem. Doubtful. But - the Mac is has been working fine for a month with OS11.2.2

If your computer is only a month old, you should still have unlimited Apple telephone support. I would do two things in your case:

1) Call them and report, ask them to ensure they escalate and/or report to the engineers.

2) Then separately, file a bug report at Apple Feedback https://www.apple.com/feedback/

These two ways are the only ways that Apple gets to hear about this - the more people who report it, the more likely they are to work on a fix. Apple doesn’t read these user forums.

Genius bar (Montreal) re-installed my OS about 2 months ago - and it's been good since. I don't know if they did anything else. They claimed that they had never heard of this problem. Doubtful.

I bought an MBP MI in December 2020. I had the "pink screen" issue. I brought it to the local genius bar (Montreal). The intake person said they'd never heard of that problem. I have/had my doubts about that answer. But ...they reinstalled my OS (now updated to 11.3.1) and restored my data from TM. I don't know if they did anything else, but my Mac has worked flawlessly since. I find the genius bar and on phone Apple support to be generally great.

So far it has only crashed when i connected to the monitor BEFORE waking up the MBA. It has never happened when not connected to monitor, and it doesn't happen if I wake up the MBA BEFORE connecting the monitor via Apple adaptor. I need thr monitor a lot for my work, but not always.

Worth reporting via Apple feedback, they don't read these user forums - but they do read direct feedback messages:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

The update to the app I was downloading was not actually compatible for MacOS, so the update failed and the computer restarted. I can still open and run the old version of the app, which I guess was truly compatible.

Now that I think about it, a pretty normal hiccup for being so early on into this cross-compatibility world!

[Link Edited by Moderator]

I'm having this issue too, MBP M1, 16gb ram. Was watching 4k Youtube videos, had Sidecar running with 3 desktops, and 3 desktops as well on my actual MacBook Pro. Computer randomly froze, heard a moderate BEEP, then pink screen for a brief second, then crashed. It restarted by itself after the crash.

This is the second time this happened in a week. I am on Big Sur 11.1

The PC has been on with side car on an iPad Pro 3rd gen 12.9 for over a week now before this happened.

I feel like it is a memory leak in the OS

Ok please report via Apple feedback https://www.apple.com/feedback/ and also call the Apple telephone support number and make sure the operative you deal with reports it to the engineers. I we ALL do this, there is a greater chance that Apple will fix it. For anyone who doesn't already know this, Apple does NOT read these user forums.

It's all weird; Apple is weird in so many ways. But if you could all just report via the Feedback page, at least it will get to the engineers, who are the only ones who can fix these bugs. Other than talking to Apple Support over the 'phone and asking them to escalate, or going to a Genius Bar in a city that has a proper Apple Store, this is the only way to 'get through' to the people who matter at Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/