USB Keyboard Plugged into Monitor Often Doesn't Work

After reading about and trying all the formulas that have worked for some I tried unplugging the power on the monitor without unplugging anything else and plugging it back in. Surprisingly it worked. What a flaky thing.

Just thought I'd report that none of the solutions here have worked for me. I have a mid-2014 MBP and two brand new thunderbolt displays. Plugging the keyboard into the monitor worked perfectly for about a week. Suddenly one day when I came into work and plugged in the thunderbolt cable, my keyboard refused to be recognized. I have indeed tried the extension cable trick that so many people are reporting as a solution. It hasn't worked once. I've tried plugging it into both monitors. I've tried reseating every cable in my setup, unplugging and replugging both monitors, etc. Nothing works.

The only 100% solution was to plug the keyboard directly into the MBP. That has never once given me a problem, though it does suck to have to use up one of only two available USB ports on my machine. I have two other USB peripherals and I now have to trade them back and forth or go buy a USB hub, unless I want to dive behind my monitors every single time I want to plug them in. So ridiculous for how expensive these monitors were. I had a TBD at my last job as well and it began having issues where it would flicker to black and then eventually stay black until I reseated the thunderbolt cable; after about ten minutes it would do it again. There's another thread like this one all about that particular issue too. I was expecting top of the line tech here Apple, WTH?? *SMH*

I miss Steve Jobs. 😢

I spend at least 3-5 minutes every morning rebooting my Macbook pro, swapping USB ports and unplugging things trying to resolve this problem. I have no handle on what fixes it when it suddenly starts working again.

I'm having the exact same problem. Takes a me several tries to get my usb keyboard to start working. I've done everything this thread has mentioned....

and still no love. It's very frustrating. It's like it just randomly decides when it'll start working again. I've pretty much ditched my Apple USB keyboard at this point. Logitech windows keyboard works great... pretty hysterical eh?

Have you tried Apple's USB extension cable? It definitely works. Although it's incredible they haven't fixed it yet. And they probably won't since TBD is probably on the verge of being discontinued. Nevertheless it's weak, because they're still selling stand at full price nonetheless. Eh, Apple.

Anyways, I had finally gone with the Bluetooth keyboard

Worked for me too! Don't ask me why...usb extensions cable in between the laptop and the keyboard and no problems anymore.

I messaged earlier about this, but after some time I can give an update.

I think I can say with certainty that the problem is limited to the keyboard itself. I don't know what it is, but there's a percentage of the keyboards out there that are bad. Maybe the ones they're selling now have been fixed for this, but I know when I had the problem and the keyboard was replaced with another Apple USB Keyboard, it would work. Below are some points regarding this.

• I have 14 Apple Thunderbolt displays and Apple USB keyboards in my office
• When we first hooked them up, they were showing this issue, we tried various combinations of rearranging keyboards with monitors, using extension cords, etc. As a result I saw a lot of strange results -- a keyboard would work fine with one monitor but not another, some worked perfectly well with every monitor, etc
• I took a Thunderbolt display and keyboard to the Apple store for a genius appointment. At this point I still wasn't 100% on the keyboard being the problem. After changing around the cables with other pieces of hardware including his own laptop, he saw that at different times when plugging and unplugging the cables the symptoms would show or not show. At one point he looked like he'd been told the world wasn't real. After that, it was decided that the keyboard was the problematic piece of equipment and to try out a replacement.
• I took back to the Apple Store and got replacements for about 4-5 keyboards (if I'm remembering correctly) out of my original pool of 14 keyboards. Horrible percentage -- but people would never notice the problem with the keyboard as they work perfectly fine unless plugged into a Apple Thunderbolt monitor (and there was no guarantee of that since another of the same monitor would work).
• It's going on three years later and there hasn't been a problem with any of the keyboards or monitors since that time. Some are using the extension cable, some are not.

In short, I think the issue can be isolated specifically to the Apple USB Keyboard and if you try replacing it with another of the same model, the issue will go away.

I'm also suffering from a similar issue. Although I have noticed it is not just the keyboard that fails to work, my iPhone USB cable also doesn't work when plugged in to the display. This leads me to believe the problem is with the display rather than the keyboard.

I have found a simple workaround. Unplugging the display and then plugging it back in seems to bring it's USB ports back to life.

I'm inclined to think it's the display when I read your posting. When I read scoccera's experience with multiple keyboards, I still think it's the display. Just some keyboards seem to make the display happy. I took my original brand new keyboard back and exchanged it for another brand new but still had the non-functioning keyboard problem. I then discovered I think what was MichaloM's original solution of a couple of years ago: add the USC cable extension and that (cross fingers) has worked over the past year. Thanks MicihaloM! I may try your solution of unplugging the display but that is a bit tiresome. No thanks to Apple on this one.

I'm late to the party, but I followed one of the above suggestions and just plugged in the USB cable that came with my monitor—in addition to plugging in the Thunderbolt cable—and my USB keyboard works just like it should.

Had I been thinking, I would have tried that before reading this thread. I used both the USB and a DVI cable with my old MacBook Pro, so it stands to reason that just like the DVI I was using before, Thunderbolt only works the monitor, not any USB devices attached to the monitor.

Hope this helps someone else.

My Thunderbolt display centralized USB setup hooked up to a Macbook Air via the displays original Thunderbolt cord was working fine for about a year until last week when it started to get flaky about recognizing an wired keyboard and backup storage device. Things would be working fine and then the connection would drop without touching or moving any of the hardware/wires. If I unplugged the Thunderbolt cord from the Macbook Air and plugged it in again it would start up only to drop again anywhere from a few minutes to a 1/2 hour or so.

I read posts about the issue and some suggested it could be from the display not having enough power to drive the USB connected peripherals and recommended trying hooking everything up to a dedicated powered USB (and bypassing the display's centralized USB capability). So I hooked up a Sabrent 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub (Model HB-RU37) that's powered and all the USB connected peripherals have been working fine and the problem hasn't recurred. So definitely give this a try.

As far as why this wasn't an issue until a year after I started using the Thunderbolt display who knows. Perhaps whatever board inside the display is involved in this particular feature has started to fail which is something that Apple should look into given how many people seem to be experiencing the same thing for a high-premium display product.

This seems to work btw. The trick is to plug the MagSafe first followed by the USB and then the Display Port

Hi, I had the same issue until I plugged the USB extension cable provided with the keyboard. Now everything works fine.

Fixed the issue for me immediately! Hope it continues to work!

thanks

This is not a TB issue, i got a Cinema display with mini display port, the same problems here, but hey Apple, its only been 4 years with this problem, WHY FIX IT? Eh....