Intel Mac mini - Wake from sleep issue

[el-John-o]

Hey friends!

2018 Mac mini, 3.2GHz i7, 32GB of RAM, running macOS Big Sur (11.2.3)

I'm having a wake from sleep issue. Whenever it wakes from sleep, Finder is unresponsive, there are no icons on the desktop, and it has to be relaunched. Also, apps that were open have to be force quit and re-opened, their windows don't come up. The menu bar is also unresponsive.
Today, in desperation I completely reinstalled Big Sur (formatted the drive and installed it fresh), same issue.

Two displays are attached, both via USB-C to DisplayPort adapters. Both Dell P2715q 4K displays. Nothing else unusual or exotic, nothing else attached but a keyboard, mouse, and a webcam.

Any ideas?

 

[rdparris]

Exact same issue here With my 2018 Mac mini

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestion:
Don't put the Mini to sleep.
Instead, just "leave it idle, but not sleeping", and put THE DISPLAYS to sleep instead, or just turn them off.

The difference in power consumption between a "sleeping" and an "awake, but idling" Mini is so negligible as to be all-but-nonexistant.

At night, TURN OFF the Mini.
Turn it back on again the next day.

 

[el-John-o]

My suggestion:
Don't put the Mini to sleep.
Instead, just "leave it idle, but not sleeping", and put THE DISPLAYS to sleep instead, or just turn them off.

The difference in power consumption between a "sleeping" and an "awake, but idling" Mini is so negligible as to be all-but-nonexistant.

At night, TURN OFF the Mini.
Turn it back on again the next day.

That’s may work as a band-aid but I’d still like basic OS functions to work correctly.

 

[gdbleb]

I have darn near the same config as the OP and have no issues like that. I used to sleep the Mini and turn off the 2 Dell displays. Now I just turn off the 2 displays and walk away. Some morning's wake-up are more "wink'ier" than others. Have you tried rebooting w/ NVRAM reset? This seems to clear up some things. My mini used to mix up right monitor from left monitor after I reversed them. Still does once every 6 months or so.

 

[STC1709]

Why not just shut it down

 

[el-John-o]

Why not just shut it down

1. It's not unreasonable to expect the computer to function correctly.

2. Software updates, cloud services, etc., all work great when a computer is left 'on' and in deep sleep.

3. Sometimes I leave my desk to poop or eat lunch (or eat lunch and then poop), all scenarios where shutting down would be silly.

 

[Honza1]

Sleep should work, no reason not to. I sleep my macs all the time and my 2018 i5 sleeps well. Something is wrong with system. Here is what I would look at:
1. Check the SSD using Disk utility. Cheap and easy to do. Finder needing restart is not normal and could be caused by disk errors. Even though one would expect other issues (slow system etc.)
2. Reinstall system in place. Simply, run full installer from Apple web site on existing system. This helped me to fix system few times when it became "vonky". Make sure you have backup first, this should be non destructive, but who knows.
3. May be wait for next week new Big Sur release and see, if that fixes it.
4. If still bad, create new user account and try there. May be there is something wrong with your user setup. If yes, some application your user loads is causing this.
5. Check non-Apple kernel extensions (listed in system information) and see, if there is anything there you should remove. In some way, try to remove as much as possible. These kexts are sources of lots of grief. See, if there are updates for Big Sur for software which uses them.
... if still not right, call Apple and ask for their suggestions.