Bought a Mac Mini M4 in Dec. 16 mb Ram, 250mb SSD, 2 TB External. Sequoia 15.2-15.3. My Mac Mini will suddenly go solid black while using it. Lasts for about 2-3 seconds and is fine with no changes afterword. I upgraded to 15.3 and it still continues to do it, maybe 1 or 2 times a day. Not a real detriment to using it but...
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Mac mini
It does depend on the quality of the monitor, but HDMI is, first and foremost, a TV connection. And by quality, I mean cheaper monitors often limit HDMI to the original HD resolution of 1920x1080, regardless of any higher resolutions the monitor can support under a DisplayPort or USB-C Thunderbolt connection.
That, and over the years, I've seen far too many posts here by folks trying to use HDMI. Issues which disappeared when they used their monitor's DisplayPort option.
I have an EIZO monitor that allows me to use DisplayPort, USB-C or HDMI. Given the cost of these monitors, I know HDMI would work (with a proper high speed HDMI cable), but I'm still going to use a connection meant for computer monitors before I'd even consider HDMI.
Having an HDMI port is intended for video work. It eliminates the need for a break-out box. You use DisplayPort or USB-C to a monitor for your work screen in Final Cut Pro, Avid, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, etc., and a separate HDMI output to a reference monitor (TV) to see how color will appear on a TV as you simultaneously work in your video editor.
Have a couple Samsung monitors that act up with my M4 Mac mini too. Suspect its a handshake issue of some kind either between Mac and monitor or a cable quality issue? I gave up on HDMI and switched to USB-C to DisplayPort because my monitors have that port. Can't say it solved the issue completely but has reduced it. I had a Dell monitor with built in dock and could never get a good reliable connection. Dell said that model series did not play nice with Mac's. They did offer me a firmware update that unfortunately did not help. Hard to say why something works for months and then doesn't? That is the frustrating part.
HDMI should always be the last choice for a computer connection. Does the monitor support DisplayPort? If it does, use that.
I tried 50Hz too and couldn't stand how jerky the mouse pointer and scrolling were. When I swapped to the USBC > DP cable, it defaulted to 144Hz and it's been rock steady now for a month. No idea why.
I had the same problem with my Dell monitor. I switched over to a 40 Gbps USB-c cable and it fixed the problem.
Wanted to share that this happens for me too. I have Mac mini M4 Pro and I connect it to a Philips Evnia 32M2N8900/00 display using a 40 Gbps USB-C cable from Belkin.
It works fine most of the time, but seemingly out the blue (seems in conjunction when I switching apps using the apps switcher) I get this total blackout of the video signal for some a couple of seconds. When it happens it usually happens at least twice after each other.
I've been using the display with Refresh rate ”Variable (48-240 Herz)” and someone suggested that I try using 120 Hz instead as that will omit the use of Display Stream Compression (DSC).
I'm trying that now and will see if it makes a difference.
Quite annoying that this is a problem, though. I also have a Windows desktop PC connected to this display (DisplayPort) and I can't remember that I've seen the same problem there. I mostly run that as fixed 240 Hz, though. can try to go variable too and see. But it seems to be a Mac issue.
I’m not sure if this is a cure for the momentary screen blackouts we’ve all encountered, but since I made one change, it hasn’t happened again for about a week. Here’s what I did with my LG dual-screen setup - the left monitor connected via C/Thunderbolt and the right monitor connected via HDMI:
1. Disconnected and swapped the cables that were connected to the monitors (leaving them connected in the same positions on the M4 Mac Mini) while everything was on. This changed the right monitor to the main/#1 of course.
2. In System Settings > Displays I swapped the right monitor to the left side by clicking on the right monitor image and dragging it to the left - rather than using the “Arrange” option.
Per my previous posts, I tried swapping the physical monitors, swapping the cables, replacing the cables, etc. and the left monitor would still briefly go black (never the right).
Again, it’s been about a week, so I cannot be sure it won’t happen again at some point, but so far this seems to have resolved it for my particular setup. Not sure what I’d try for a single monitor other than what folks have already suggested.
It’s above my pay grade, but maybe one of the experts here can make a guess as to why what I did, or for that matter what @ChupacabraZZZ did, that would resolve the issue. It’s clearly a hardware problem IMHO, but there may be a solution?
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Hi,
Have you tried running diagnostics to determine whether the port itself is faulty? If not, I would recommend starting there. It’s also a good idea to check for any software-related issues. While reinstalling macOS might be worth trying, it’s unlikely to resolve the problem if it’s "Firmware level deep".
In this case, the best solution would be to factory reset the Mac mini using DFU mode. This process will completely restore the firmware and macOS, ensuring that any software-related problems are eliminated. If the issue still persists after a DFU restore, it’s most likely a hardware problem.
Hope that makes sense!
I have the same issue on an Asus 4K display with HDMI using 2560 x 1440. After trying all kinds of things , yesterday I changed from 60HZ to 50HZ and so far, so good.
For what it's worth... I changed from USB-C cable to Thunderbolt 3 cable and so far no glitches... Mac Studio M4 Max. ASUS ProART 5k display.
No Zoom, but I guess I should try swapping out the cable for an HDMI 2.1 one. Grabbing one from Anker before sending doing any warranty stuff. I just assumed that because this monitor worked problem free with a PC that the cable wouldn't matter, but seems that may not be true. Thanks.
The HDMI port does work.
The problem is that it does not work using long cheap HDMI cables like the ones used between DVD players and TV's or the long cheap HDMI cables that are supplied by display manufactures.
There's another fix that only 2 users have claimed to work (me being one of them): that's the Zoom app. A user reported that removing it fixed it for hime. I had Zoom so uninstalled it with AppCleaner.
WARNING: If you use AppCleaner on an app that you have other apps from the same developer, like Adobe, you must be extremely careful checking all checkboxes and deleting. Some for those files may support other apps from the same developer and deleting them can mess them up. Adobe apps is a primary example. I know from experience. For singular apps from a developer it's safe.
That fixed it for me. It's an unlikely fix but if you have Zoom installed give it a try.
You might be #3.
I bought this Highwings HDMI cable and it seems to have fixed things.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NX5CZTF?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
Or maybe it was the OS update.
Quick update on my life in this burden. I found out that if you shutdown mini overnight and power on in the morning, I can go through out the day without blackouts. I have recently upgraded to 15.4 will see if this update is more stable, its been just a couple days w/o blackouts. Release notes do have info about monitor issue. but the one we are facing in this thread.
Update:
I turned off the Mac Mini M4, unplugged all cables including the mains plugs and rebooted.
Touch wood, I have not had the black screen come up for four days now. Same OS and same monitor firmware. Weird.
Mac mini M4 screen go black randomly
