2018 Mac Mini monitor wake from sleep and power light

Another follow-up:

I'm so far putting up with the delay when I'm at the desktop. What I've found no solution for is remote access, i.e., the machine cannot be roused from sleep for network access. If anyone has an idea I'd love to hear it.

I also have the issue, although intermittently. That is, wake from sleep works as expected many times, but then my Mac mini 2018 (10.14.3) won't wake from sleep several times in a row. Does not appear to be consistent in terms of short sleep vs long (overnight) sleep. Just sometimes when I press the Enter key to wake from sleep, I will get a grey screen instead of the expected login screen.

What has worked for me so far is to simply turn off the monitor and turn it right back on, and the login screen appears.

I have an HP 2509 connected via DVI -> HDMI cable that I bought at the Apple store.

Absolute same problem here with Mac mini 2018 and LG 27UK850-W. I erased ssd and did a fresh install of Mojave. problem persists. what I found out: Mac seems to wake up but login screen does not show up. so what I found out is to simply insert you password without a screen and the hit enter again. just imagine the login screen and voila… the desktop appears. just remember the steps to login… try it on a restart without problems to remember the procedure.

other notes: I installed every possible app from LG support (dual display, true color etc) but none of them solves the problems. worst case is to simply hold power button to force shut down. after that the password reset will appear which takes up to 10 minutes to bypass that. I first encountered the problem with one LG 27UK850-W. then I purchased a second one from another dealer because I thought it would be a rare problem with the one display. but I have the problem with both displays! so it seems obvious its a Mac related problem. I tried to connect with HDMI and/or USB-C and several usb-c ports. does not make any difference. at the end its still connected via usb-c.

Again I tested my procedure: Mac was shuted down. displays off. I pushed power button on Mac, white led in the front in on but nothing happened to the displays. I waited a while imagining the login screen should come next without seeing it. I then inserted my password like I am blind folded. hit enter. wait round about 10 seconds and wow – the desktop appears. what a ridiculous behavior!!! hope to see a true fix very soon!!

I also switched from an HDMI cable to a USB-C-to-DisplayPort cable, and that seems to help. My monitor, btw, is an Asus ProArt PA329... This also fixed another weird problem that I had where, at 60 Hertz, the display shifted up a quarter-inch, giving me a black line across the bottom, and cutting off the top half of my top menu.

I'm having the same issue on my 2018 i7 Mac mini with an LG 27UK850-W. I've just been in contact with LG about this, and they are saying that we would need to get in contact with Apple directly as it's not typically an issue on their side.

I went ahead and filed a bug report at bugreport.apple.com

LG did mention that typically they wouldn't get in contact with Apple to investigate the issue unless they had an overwhelming customer response. So maybe if a few more of you can get in contact with LG here (I used web chat) https://www.lg.com/uk/support/contact/chat-email

then maybe we can get enough attention to the issue for LG to reach out to Apple to escalate

I was able to confirm you suggestion this AM. (First time in many logins that I have got the dreaded "grey screen" after sleeping. I really thought that something was fixed -- or almost 100% fixed for my setup, in 10.14.3.) Anyway, I did what you suggested and typed in the password, blind, and voila, I got logged in and the main desktop appeared. Thanks!

Just got the 2018 Mac mini in December and mine is doing exactly what you described. It's like it's sluggish to respond... however it is running because if you hit the wrong buttons on the keyboard, when it finally comes up you can have a mess. Only the video is not working, the rest of the functions work fine wether you can see them or not. I hope somebody figures this out. Shouldn't have to mess around like this with a brand new apple product! Post if you figure it out please! Thanks!

Same issue as everyone else. LG UK27-600W connected via HDMI. This issue coupled with the sluggish Bluetooth mouse performance, forces me to return this item for a full refund. So unfortunate because I truly like this device 😔

I've tried toggling most, if not all, of these settings, without solving the problem. FWIW, my machine is most likely to show problems after sleeping all night, less likely if it has only been sleeping for a couple of hours. My morning routine now is to click the Mini's power button, click the power button for the Bluetooth trackpad, click the power button to wake the monitor from sleep, and go make coffee. When I come back, I'll get the login screen right up. If I try without waiting, it will take some minutes.

I'm not perfectly sure yet, but it seems that the latest OS update (10.14.4) may just possibly have addressed this issue. At any rate, the Mini has been waking from long sleep more quickly the past few days since the upgrade was applied.

I noticed this too. Definitely faster waking from sleep. Now when I turn on my Cintiq monitor after sleeping, I still have to wait a bit, but it's no where near like the game of turning on and off the monitor and mouse-wiggling I was doing before.

I did just do an OS update so it seems likely this was addressed.

Yes, it's rather curious that Apple did not manage to come across the monitor wake issue in testing, or indeed fix it in the firmware updates in the Mojave dot releases since the 2018 Mac mini was released. Still, I live in hope.

I have had problems with the display not responding after going to sleep. I tried everything from fiddling with the keys and mouse to turning the display off and on with the power button. I am using a 32" inch Asus PA29 display. I have tried restarting mac mini, changing the cable to HDMI and unplugging everything and starting over to see if there is a hardware conflict. Finally, I began using the display's display port to thunderbolt 3.1 cable. That worked splendidly for several weeks, then the problem started up again and I switched to HDMI again. No luck. Finally, I have started just unplugging the display and replugging it from the power source with the display to thunderbolt cable. That seems to work very well. Try that. Much easier than all the other steps and so far, works every time. I'll see in few weeks. Pain in the butt.

Another VERY unhappy Mac Mini owner here - dual monitors, one is running from USB-C (via an adapter to HDMI) without a problem but the second monitor is using HDMI out and is giving the same issue. After an overnight sleep, the HDMI out will sometimes start up okay, sometimes a grey, flickering screen and then today, nothing. The Mac thinks it only has one monitor and the monitor thinks the Mac is still asleep. Unplugging the cable from the Mac end immediately put a message on the monitor to say it had lost its source - but only when unplugged from the Mac Mini, so the monitor was seeing the computer but thought that the computer was powered down so the monitor went to sleep. Putting the cable into an HDMI to mini-displayport adapter and popping it into my Macbook showed the monitor works perfectly, so it's not the monitor or the cable. After several "plug in, plug out" attempts the Mac Mini suddenly recognised that there was a monitor. Come on Apple - sort this out please!