M1 Mac Mini No Wake Connected Displays, Some Owners Complain

Some customers who bought an M1 Mac mini have been experiencing a problem that causes the device not to wake up a connected third-party display from sleep.

This is not an issue that affects the owners of ‌M1‌ ‌Mac mini‌, but there are several complaints about it MacRumors forums and the Apple Support Communities go back to November when the ‌Mac mini‌ was first released. MacRumors gooimac reader explains:

Apparently my ‌M1‌ (8gb / 256) ‌Mac mini‌ doesn’t want to wake up my displays after he’s asleep. I have tried 2 different displays with 2 different HDMI cables with the same thing happening on each one. I only use one at a time. I also noticed some pink squares / graphic wisdom on the Big Sur boot / login screen (with the colored back, not the black and white boot up)

MacRumors reader Mike, who emailed us about the issue, has seen the same problems.

I have a new Mac Mini ‌M1‌ with 16 GB of RAM running Big Sur 11.2.3 and every time the computer and screen go to sleep, the computer will not be able to wake up the screen.

In fact, I get a “No Signal” on the screen after the Mini wakes up so technically the computer wakes up the monitor but does not send a video signal. The screen is a 34 “LG Ultrawide 4K Thunderbolt. It wakes up well with my 2018 MacBook Pro so there’s nothing wrong with the display itself.

The only way I can get the Mini to send a signal to the display is to unplug and recharge it in the Thunderbolt cable. At times again. Obviously, this is not a suitable solution.

This issue seems to affect a wide range of displays that connect across Thunderbolt, HDMI, and DisplayPort converters, but there are also plenty of people who have no issues at all.

It’s not clear what the problem is, but Apple has been looking into one ‌M1‌ ‌Mac mini‌ display case that causes strange pink squares to appear on displays linked to one of the her tools.

Apple is aware of the issue, and a future update could be a solution in the upcoming works. One solution for now may be the feature that puts the putsMac mini‌ to sleep, but that’s not very appropriate. The other solution is to empty and refill in a non-responsive display after ‌Mac mini‌ wakes up from sleep, but that is also an unstable solution. There seems to be no alternative solution available at this time.