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.
My old M! Mac Mini was doing this, and now my new Mac Mini M4 Pro is doing it. Randomly, some days are fine. Today it was a bit worse. I rebooted and as I was reading these posts it blanked about six times. I turned off my LG monitor and turned it back on and it hasn't blanked yet in a half hour. Will see.....
I'll add a "me too". Identical problem... screen goes black for a second or two then returns to normal. It's sporadic but happens every time I use it. Occurs most often when using Safari, but also at other times. Cannot find a correlation with any other activity. Running a dual monitor setup and it only happens to the "main"/#1 monitor.
M4 Mac Mini, 500GB SSD running Sequoia v15.5 (although the issue appeared as soon as I bought it running an earlier version) connected to two LG 27UN850 27" 4K UHD monitors, one by Thunderbolt, one by HDMI.
I've switched out the monitor positions, switched out which monitor is using which cable, replaced both cables, hard reboot, etc. No improvement. Issue continues. So it's not the monitors, not the cables.
Upgraded from an M1 Mac Mini - same dual monitor setup - never experienced this issue.
Apparently it's down to the M4 Mac Mini. Annoying but not the end of the world. Hopefully Apple will address this at some point.
Just an update - as I've reported this several times generally as they occurred - lately it's *rare* that it happens now whereas it seemed to occur a few times a week previously, but last month and just now, i've had an occurrence (I can literally count to ~4 when it happens) of a blackout. The blackout times are consistent (3-4 seconds) every time it occurs. As far as video - it's simply a complete blackout of the screen which then returns. I simply wait and count and it's back.
Again my setup is USB-C to USB-C high speed cable (i've tried different USB-C cables) to a single ASUS PC27JCV display. It doesn't seem to matter what port, and this time occurred soon after waking from sleep and I had no visible disk activity with my attached external drives (which I thought were involved in previous iterations of instances).
I should add i'm current on versions, etc: Sequoia 15.5 (24F74).
Scott Harrison wrote:
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...
What make and model monitor do you have?
How is it connected to your Mini?
What ports does the monitor have?
What fixes have you tried already?
So that would indicate it is a problem with the Mac Mini's HDMI port? I just connected a USB-c to HDMI adapter.
So USB-c to female HDMI adapter to a regular HDMI cable. We'll see if that solves it for me. Maybe better to get one cable and no adapter - USB-c to HDMI.
Welcome to the club. I suggest that you read my previous post/comment. But in short, this phenomenon is happening with my M4 MacBook. So at this point I strongly believe that this is more of a software or communication bug than a hardware issue. And not even issue at all but more of an annoyance. Same thing happened with me too. Ended up buying the best possible cable and this cable more than enough and it wasn't cheap. For days and weeks it was OK, but after that and MacOS26 upgrade it came back. Hope the best.
I have been using an Apple USB-C cord for my monitor for months now with no issue. For testing purposes, I tried an HDMI cord recommended earlier in this thread:
10K 8K HDMI 2.1 Cable 2-Pack 6.6FT, Highwings Certified 48Gbps Ultra High Speed Slim HDMI Cord,Support 4K@120Hz 8K@60Hz, HDCP 2.2&2.3, Dynamic HDR,eARC,DTS:X, Compatible with Roku TV/HDTV/PS5/Blu-ray at Amazon.
It was slightly better that the 5 or 6 HDMI cords that I have previously tried and only blanking 4 times during the week long trial. I'm sticking with the C cord.
Kurt Lang wrote:
Something I had to first look up because I keep forgetting what the color space is called.
Supposedly, you can choose between RGB and YCbCr color formats for HDMI output, with YCbCr being the default for HDMI connections. How do you choose? Good question, as I've never looked it up.
That's the main difference. HDMI on the mini can handle up to a 4K, 60Hz output. Plenty of bandwidth for a good monitor. But it's the color space that's important here. Computer monitors expect RGB data. When you use HDMI, RGB has to be converted to YCbCr (TV color) before being sent to the monitor. Not that the very few milliseconds per frame it takes to do this is anything you'd notice.
It's also why HDMI to DisplayPort, or HDMI to USB-C cables sometimes don't work. The computer and monitor are then both confused. Are you trying to get RGB, or YCbCr color? Which again, is something better quality monitors can handle, but is also still not a preferred choice.
Thank you, Kurt Lang! Your mention of choosing between HDMI color formats got me curious, because I'm temporarily using an old Lenovo PC monitor via HDMI. I went into System Settings..., Displays, Color profile: and selected what I know Apple uses on my iPad, iPhone, and Macs with built-in monitors, the Display P3 color profile.
Wow! What a difference it made from the monitor's default color scheme. Besides much better colors, the screen images are sharper, too.
Thank you very much for all your info and the curiosity it sparked in me! I believe you helped me see the colors and images as Apple intended, even at lower resolution.
John
I’m another one who has this issue. I bought Mac Studio M4 Max and Asus Pro Art 24” two months ago and I do have occasional blackouts since then. Monitor connected via a Thunderbolt cable that came with the monitor, so I’m already on USB-C cable. Blackouts happen mostly in 3-5 min after the mac is woken up. Sometimes they happen just in the middle of my working session, but that’s rare. Perhaps once per a session (from tuning on till off). I tried another Thunderbolt 4 certified cable from Satechi with the very same results.
I also have an external NVMe drive like the topic starter and I suspect it could be somehow involved. Also, I don’t have hot corners configured that would occasionally put the mac into a sleep.
Are you guys also using an external drive with your macs?
This is the one that has been working flawlessly for me, not one blackout since switching to it.
This one fixed it for me: https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Highwings-48Gbps-Braided-Cable-4K/dp/B08NX5CZTF
Something I had to first look up because I keep forgetting what the color space is called.
Supposedly, you can choose between RGB and YCbCr color formats for HDMI output, with YCbCr being the default for HDMI connections. How do you choose? Good question, as I've never looked it up.
That's the main difference. HDMI on the mini can handle up to a 4K, 60Hz output. Plenty of bandwidth for a good monitor. But it's the color space that's important here. Computer monitors expect RGB data. When you use HDMI, RGB has to be converted to YCbCr (TV color) before being sent to the monitor. Not that the very few milliseconds per frame it takes to do this is anything you'd notice.
It's also why HDMI to DisplayPort, or HDMI to USB-C cables sometimes don't work. The computer and monitor are then both confused. Are you trying to get RGB, or YCbCr color? Which again, is something better quality monitors can handle, but is also still not a preferred choice.
Same here M4 mini. 2 x AOC 4K screen connected via USB-C to DP cable. Replaced cable twice, bought new cables rated for 8K. same issue. No power cable issues. Screen connected via same cable to other PC have no issues.
I purchased my Mac Mini M4 32 GB in November of last year and have this same issue. My screen blacking typically happens early in the morning after I awaken my Mac. I have aDell U2720Q monitor and have tried several HDMI cables with the same result. Occasionally it will occur later in a longer session. Typically the screen just goes black for a second or two, but rarely it will show crazy static instead. I tried a USB-C to USB-C cable but could not get the display to recognize a signal. I might need a better cable. Anyway, it is a bit disconcerting to see a replacement M4 had the same issue.
I got a new Mac Mini M4 in January, and it behaved normally until I upgraded the system to 15.3.2, after which the momentary black screen issue began. I am having a hard time believing that it ran for months without any problem and started blacking randomly because of a hardware issue. My old Dell monitor is connected to the HDMI port on the Mini via a conversion cable to the DVI port on the monitor.
Mac mini M4 screen go black randomly
