M1 MacBook Air behaving weird!

Oya100 Said:

"M1 MacBook Air behaving weird!: I bought a new M1 MacBook Air M1 3 months back and now I'm noticing the battery is draining fast! [...] another issue I'm having is that my MacBook is unable to run the apple hardware diagnostics test! [...] what should I do? am I over worried? should I try resetting or something?"

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Why Risk a Faulty Mac?

Rather than fiddle with its settings, see about getting this serviced. It may be a faulty Mac. You have a one-year, out-of-the-box, limited-warranty on this. So, here is the Apple Support contact info:

• Contact Us - Choose Locations
• U.S.A. (800)MY-APPLE
• Proceed from there as necessary

Note: Phone calls are taking a bit to go through at the moment, due do lots of calls. And that makes sense because with the Coronavirus Pandemic, many are at home at the moment, with much more time on their hands to contact Apple. So, just stay on the line, and you will get through.

This is a known issue with Big Sur 11.3.1. There is likely nothing at all wrong with your Mac as it seems to be a bug / series of bugs in Big Sur 11.3.1.

To get out of the frozen Diagnostics, press and hold the power button (~5 seconds or more) until the Mac shuts off. Then start it normally and don't run Diagnostics since it will simply freeze in the same way again. Wait until Big Sur has been updated to fix this issue...possibly in the next upcoming update.

My experience with it follows in the text below. A link to another discussion related to this where I have also posted: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252738206?page=1

It's not just an issue with Diagnostics crashing. I've personally experienced an odd issue regarding Bluetooth immediately after updating to 11.3.1. This is the initial reason that prompted me to run Diagnostics in the first place. I posted the contents below elsewhere but feel it's appropriate here as well:

Specifically in my case, after my M1 MBA was "successfully" updated to 11.3.1, I turned off Bluetooth to test something. When I went to re-enable it, it asked me for my admin password (very odd, never seen this) to enable it. Once I entered it and enabled Bluetooth again, I could not disable Bluetooth any more...reboots/shutdowns didn't help. I then decided to run Diagnostics (accessed differently on M1's). Diagnostics opened and allowed me to begin running it. The progress bar came up and the system immediately froze. No trackpad click, nothing. This required me to force-shutdown (press & HOLD the power button until shutdown). No amount of trying would get Diagnostics to complete...it always froze immediately in the same way described above.

I wiped the SSD and reinstalled 11.3.1 from scratch which then fixed the Bluetooth issue but Diagnostics was still freezing. What good is diagnostics if it crashes/freezes?

I made a Genius Bar reservation where they verified the issue. (Some content omitted below due to perhaps embarrassing someone)

I left the MBA with them to repair it which they did (it took two days). I verified Diagnostics was working correctly when I picked up the repaired MBA.

After getting the MBA back, I initially tested the MBA but then wiped the SDD & reinstalled 11.3.1 from scratch because I wanted to start with a perfectly clean slate because of the initial Bluetooth issue. The install went well and I had my MBA back up but did zero setting up on it. I shut it down to run Diagnostics which now ran fine but was now reporting a possible problem with the power supply. I shut down, disconnected the power supply and then restarted diagnostics...again with a reported possible power supply problem.

The MBA ran 100% fine otherwise. Because the OS was just cleanly installed, I again wiped the SSD, then reinstalled 11.3.1 from scratch to test. After it was finished, I again ran Diagnostics which now completed without any issues. The MBA is back to normal now but this makes me think that the 11.3.1 update is somehow corrupting the firmware or causing some kind of issue with how Diagnostics is performing. The firmware is updated (if an update is required) when the OS is updated...this was also verified by another different Genius in the Apple Store.

I believe a Big Sur update may be released very soon but have no clue when.

The day I got my M1 Air home (~1 month ago), I ran Diagnostics on it multiple times (I do this just to get an idea of the state of the device, new out of the box) with zero issues. I am unsure of the Big Sur version it came with out of the box however. The next update of 11.3 that I installed, I did not test Diagnostics on since 11.3.1 was released *very* soon after 11.3…I did not even think of doing it until the Bluetooth issue that I mentioned above prompted me to try running it for a valid reason.

Diagnostics may indeed have crashed in your case on 11.3. All I know it that the flakiness began with mine immediately after updating to 11.3.1. 11.3 seemed to be ok as far as stability.

Reading the other threads regarding Diagnostics crashing, I get the impression that 11.3.1 started it.

I will also mention that when I took mine in to the Apple Store and mentioned that this started with 11.3.1 to the Genius, that he said “we’ve been seeing issues with it”

Oya100 Said:

"M1 MacBook Air behaving weird!: Called apple. Had my mac erased, disk erased, and then macOS reinstalled. then ran the diagnostics test and it froze. then last night i got the macOS 11.4 update. Installed it and then tried the test, still failed :( what now?"

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Send this Out for Service:

Ask Apple if you can have this serviced. See if they can send you a box - you would then ship it out, having then diagnose it, and then work on it.

TheLittles wrote:

Send this Out for Service:

Ask Apple if you can have this serviced. See if they can send you a box - you would then ship it out, having then diagnose it, and then work on it.

I have personally taken my MBA in to the Apple Store for this very same issue. All they did was revive the firmware which only temporarily fixes Diagnostics. The next time Big Sur is updated, Diagnostics will likely again be broken after the update. This was the case for me after updating Big Sur with both 11.3.1 and 11.4 a couple of days ago.

There is likely nothing wrong with the MBA at all...it's the Big Sur update which flashes/updates the firmware upon installation. This is likely the issue. In my case, my MBA runs 100% fine despite the broken Diagnostics.

If you could downgrade the OS, I doubt it would work. The reason is that the firmware is updated at the same time that the OS is updated...if there is an update for it. As far as I know, firmware is never backdated so the existing firmware on the Mac will remain the same.

Just for reference:

Firmware that was installed with 11.3.1: 6723.101.4

Firmware that was installed with 11.4: 6723.120.36

Just why is it that you want to run diagnostics?

Unless there is a vexxing problem, no need to run them?

And, obviously, taking it to Apple will not have the desired result and would be a waste of time. So, be patient. Apple will release an update - we have no clue when that will be though since we do not work for Apple.

No problem. I have faith that these odd issues will get fixed. Until then, it’s pointless to run Diagnostics because it’s clearly broken in some cases.