Help! My MacBook Air Screen Keeps Going Black

Hello everyone,

I'm experiencing a significant issue with my 13" MacBook Air M1 (A2337 model). Out of nowhere, the screen turns black, although the keyboard backlight stays on, and the trackpad remains responsive. I tried holding the power button until it turned off. The Mac powered down and restarted normally—problem solved, right? Unfortunately, not.

After about 5 minutes, the screen went black again. This time, when I tried to restart it, the Mac powered up, but the screen stayed black. I could hear the startup sound, and the keyboard backlight would flicker, but the display itself remained off. However, when I connected it to a TV, everything worked fine on the external display.

I suspected a hardware issue since my warranty has expired, so I opened up the MacBook and checked the display connectors. After reseating them, the laptop worked again. I decided to reset the OS as a precaution. I backed up most of my files to an external SSD, reset the OS, and everything seemed to be working perfectly. I spent the next hour reinstalling apps and transferring files back.

Then I updated the MacBook to macOS Sonoma 14.6.1. During the update, the screen went black again. Initially, I thought it was just rebooting as part of the update process, but after 30 minutes with no change, I started to worry. I held the power button, turned it off, and then restarted it—thankfully, it worked. But a few minutes later, the screen went black again, and this time, rebooting didn't fix it.

I left the laptop off for a few hours and then tried again. The display came back on, and that’s how I’m writing this message now. However, the issue persists—it seems to turn off when I’m not actively using it. If I leave it idle, I’m almost certain the display will go black again. When I try to restart it, there's only a small chance it will display anything.

I bought this MacBook used about two years ago, and it's been my reliable companion for schoolwork, coding, video editing, and even playing light games like Minecraft. It’s two years old, and I’ve pushed it hard, but it’s never let me down until now.

As a college student in India, I rely on this laptop more than anything for my studies. I really don’t have the budget to replace or repair it right now, so any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.