MacBook Air 2019 black display after upgrade/reinstall

strohsje wrote:

Thank you D.I. Johnson. Have done this 3 times but with no luck. Internal also external display keeps black/off.

Checked out any known shortkey with no luck. The system sound comes one time and after that it looks like the system is on the logon screen, because voice over keeps saying username or password. But don't know what dialog is showen :-(

You can try connecting an external display and try putting the laptop into Clamshell Display Mode (need external display & power adapter & USB mouse & keyboard connected, then closing the display lid). This may not always work to display the login screen.

You can try looking very closely as the built-in display to see if you can see any very faint images on it, perhaps even dimming the room lights. If the backlight is bad, then you may be able to discern what is on the screen with extreme difficulty.

You may need to log in blindly before you may be able to use the external display or to mirror the internal to it. Intel Macs are a bit easier here, but T2 Macs like yours can be difficult when the built-in display is not working....you should be able to log in & eventually get video to the external display where you can use the laptop.

Unless the brightness is at its lowest, your laptop most likely has a hardware issue with the built-in Display Assembly. Surprisingly it is not always possible to adjust screen brightness until after logging in, but a PRAM Reset should have cleared any brightness setting resetting the brightness to system defaults.

You can try a DFU Firmware Revive, but this requires access to another Mac currently running macOS 15.7+ Sequoia or macOS 26.x Tahoe (with Sequoia you will need to use the Apple Configurator v2.19 app). Occasionally this has allowed me to get access to an otherwise inaccessible Mac including one where nothing was displayed on the screen.

I hope you have good backups.

If this laptop does have a hardware issue, then I do NOT recommend any repairs for multiple reasons....the money spent on repairs is much better put towards a new laptop. Also, when you prepare to get rid of this laptop you can follow the instructions in the following Apple article so that you destroy the data on it as well as disassociate your AppleID/iCloud from it.

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

• Connect the MBA to its power charger.

• Disconnect all external devices, monitor included.

• Engage the caps lock key so that it is lit.

• Press and hold the power button until the caps lock key turns off - prob 10-12 seconds.

• Wait 1 minute, then press the power button to reboot the computer.

Does anything change?

If your Mac starts up to a blank screen - Apple Support

Hi,

Did you try to resetting NVRAM as well as SMC, also T2 Security chip?

“MacBook Air 2019 black display after upgrade/reinstall: Hello folks, after upgrade my MacBook Air 2019 from 14.8.7 to 14.8.8 the internal display is still black. Adding external display, it showed for one time the current login mask. After trying to reinstall the system, both display goes black and never show anything.[…]”

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Mirror this:

So, what happens when you connect an external HDMI monitor to it? Plug it in a hold down command and press F1. With power on, that would mirror it.