Important: Restart Your Studio Display

My new Studio Display worked great for the first couple of weeks.

Then for no apparent reason, it had problem with with choppy audio.

Apple did not know why.

I took your advice and unplugged my display from its power source.

Waited for about 15 seconds and then plugged it back into its power source.

Problem SOLVED.

Apple if you're listening, please fix this.

Give us an easy way to restart the A13 Bionic chip inside the Studio Display.

Thanks,

Tom

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Interesting read, thanks for sharing. 👍

FYI, Apple does not routinely monitor this forum for feedback.

However, they DO provide a formal mechanism for product feedback here:

Feedback - Displays - Apple

Holger Laufenberg wrote:

... it would be wise for Apple to allow us to do it properly via a software reboot/restart ...

Absolutely agree.

I cringe anytime I'm forced to perform a "crash-stop restart" of ANY device.

Recommend that you feed this back to Apple via their purpose-built mechanism if you've not done so already:

Feedback - Displays - Apple

I had the same and also other perhaps related issues:

• USB devices connected through the Studio Display would randomly disconnect multiple times a day. Unplugging/plugging the TB cables fixes it.
• Audio not working on video calls.
• Speakers not working on YouTube, but works fine on the MBP*.

*It was only after this incident that I started looking at Google and within 1 search "apple studio display speakers not working" I found this post. Thank you so much for posting the solution. Rebooting the monitor did the trick!!

Very helpful!! I just got my new display a week ago, hooked it up to my 2020 13" MBP and noticed that the "default for display" resolution was 1920x1080, which seemed insane. I tried to do firmware update it but no update was detected despite running firmware version 15.3. When I switched it to "scaled" so that I could increase the resolution to the monitor's true native setting, I was given the warning "scaling display may result in reduced performance" (or something similar). Could not figure out what was going on, so I randomly hopped on here, and found this thread. Restarted via power cycle, and boom, my native resolution is now 2560x1440, AND it finally found the 15.4 firmware update.

I had exactly the same problem--choppy audio when playing audio from my M1 Pro MBP to the Studio Display. The same audio sounded fine playing on the MBP's speakers, however.

Rebooting the MBP, swapping ports on the MBP didn't help. The source of the audio being played (YouTube via web, music from Apple Music, Apple Music downloaded to the MBP and played locally) didn't matter.

So I tried playing a YouTube video (from the YT app) on my 2018 iPad Pro to the Studio Display--still choppy sound, confirming the Studio Display as the root of the problem.

I wasn't sure how to reboot the Studio Display, so I found this support page. Rebooting the Studio Display by unplugging it from power for a minute or two solved the problem! Yippeee. Thanks.

Thank you so much! Something so obvious but the last thing I thought of. I tried a different thunderbolt cable, a different Macbook, I even looked into reinstalling the software. Nothing worked.

I contacted Apple Support and they couldn't solve the issue so asked me to bring it into the store. Luckily I found this and tried it and it fixed the issues!

It is a monitor and it would ordinarily be unusual to need to reboot a monitor. However, this monitor actually runs iOS 15.4 (soon to be 15.5), so it's not that unusual. Knowing that was the reason I thought about rebooting the Studio Display but had to come here to find out how to do it.

The Studio Display is more than just a monitor. I just wonder what, if anything, AAPL plans on doing with the A13 Bionic processor and iOS 15 built into this puppy. It's almost like an iPad on steroids. But I digress...

Many thanks for this tip. My audio was terrible through the display speakers and I was about to resign myself to sending the display back to Apple (difficult when it's the only one I have), when I remembered the thing has its own processor so I went in search of advice on rebooting it and found your advice. It worked perfectly and the audio is now OK.

Incidentally, I unplugged it whilst keeping the Mac Studio running and nothing seems to have suffered as a result.

They really need to fix this display. I have had to reboot it numerous times when the usbc ports stop working on it, the audio suddenly stops working or when the display just "freezes up". It's sad that for the price of this monitor that it doesn't work flawlessly. As much as a love the display quality and the look of the display, to have to even think about rebooting it is just plain silly... especially since there is not a power switch, reset switch or some other way to reboot it short of unplugging it. Ironically, Mine didn't start acting up until after my return period ended. I hope the 15.5 update will fix all of these problems.

I have the issue that the fan in my display is running on max all the time, even if the cable is unplugged. Sounds exactly like the computer fan but realised that it is the studio display that makes the noise. I have restarted the screen several times, updated with the latest firmware but no luck. Anyone that knows how to reset the firmware?