Thunderbolt Display screen dim or sometimes black

Recently I've had a problem with one of my Thunderbolt Displays. It seems to turn on, activate, and wake from sleep very differently than my other monitor. Both were purchased on the same day and are daisy chained into my Macbook Pro. I first noticed the change when coming out of fullscreen mode playing Minecraft, I don't know if that's a relevant issue or not, but it's when I first noticed it.


Sometimes when the computer wakes from sleep, the monitor in question wakes and it's dimmer than the others (all settings are set to full brightness, with Automatically Adjust Screen Brightness disabled) and even once in a while the monitor wakes but the screen stays black (and off) while still allowing peripherals connected to it to function. The Macbook Pro still recognizes it as on and active and will allow me to drag windows to it.


I have rebooted the Mac, resetted the PRAM, swapped monitor order in the daisy chain, tried disabling power to the monitors entirely to no avail. Sometimes it comes on full brightness after a full power off, but that's only happened twice and I can't recreate the steps to have it happen regularly.


Here are my specs:


  • MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 MB Ram
  • 2x Apple Thunderbolt Displays (27-Inch) driven by NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB graphics
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.1
  • All Firmware updates to the monitors have been done
  • Minecraft 1.8.1 if it matters.


Please help! The difference in the brightness is driving me batty!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), null

Posted on Jan 22, 2015 6:24 PM

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Thunderbolt Display screen dim or sometimes black

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