M1 Mac Mini Failing to Wake Up Connected External Displays

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 26 Mar 2021

M1 Macs are known to play finicky with external monitors. Despite Apple rolling out multiple macOS Big Sur updates, the issues still continue. M1 Mac mini owners have been complaining about their Mac unable to wake the display connected to it from sleep.

While this issue does not seem to affect all M1 Mac mini owners, there’s still a sizeable number of complaints from Mac mini owners on Apple’s support forums and MacRumors. The issue has persisted right from the first release of macOS Big Sur to the latest Big Sur 11.2.3 update. While the M1 Mac mini wakes up from sleep, it fails to wake up the monitor it is connected to. The only workaround to this problem is to unplug and re-plug the HDMI or Thunderbolt cable to the monitor.

The issue is present irrespective of whether M1 Mac mini owners use a Thunderbolt connection, HDMI port, or DisplayPort. Apple is aware of the issue, but it is unclear if it is working on a fix for it or not. If your M1 Mac mini also suffers from this issue, the only permanent workaround to it is to prevent it from going to sleep.

M1 Macs have plenty of issues including Bluetooth connectivity problems, app incompatibility issues, random crashes, limited external display support, and more. Check out some common issues with M1 MacBooks and how to fix them here. You can also use multiple external monitors with M1 MacBook Pro and M1 MacBook Air despite Apple claiming otherwise.

We Want to Hear From You

Do you own an M1 Mac mini or an M1 MacBook Air/Pro? If so, how has your experience been with it so far, especially with external monitor support? Apple’s first-gen products always have some major issues, and while the M1 Macs are impressive, there’s no doubt that they are finicky with external monitor support.