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LG Ultrafine 4k not waking with the Macbook

C

Chparigi

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 25, 2013
106
12
Switzerland, Europe
I have a Macbook 15" with touchbar which I just received, and I am using with my LG Ultrafine 4k display.

So the issue is, when the Macbook wakes from sleep, the Ultrafine 4k monitor still stays black, while the laptop still think it is connected. Have any of you encountered the same issue?
 
I don't have the monitor myself, so i really can't help you with your issue. But i've struggled to find reviews on this monitor. Would you mind sharing your opinion on it? :) Also, was your shipping estimate accurate? I'm being quoted 8-10 weeks
 
Yes, I have. I haven't tested it with 10.12.2 yet, though. Last night was my test of sleep waking on battery.
10.12.1 I was having the same problem. Wiggling the cable sometimes helped :) , I noticed the connection wasn't always great and that would wake it up.

For grins, I was also attaching it to the right side of the laptop. With just the one monitor it shouldn't really make a difference, but see if it works better by attaching it on the left side?
 
keviig said:
I don't have the monitor myself, so i really can't help you with your issue. But i've struggled to find reviews on this monitor. Would you mind sharing your opinion on it? :) Also, was your shipping estimate accurate? I'm being quoted 8-10 weeks
Click to expand...
Sure, I'll love to tell my views!

First, looking at the design, I actually think it is gorgeous! I love that the display is black, and not silver, unlike the previous Thunderbolt Displays.

The Image quality is of course superb, and though the website says that it is an 10-bit monitor, I actually see that it is a 10-bit monitor in the settings.

It is nice finally to have a monitor that works totally with the Mac, with the image being the same, and everything controlled from the Mac. It is also great that it only connects through one USB C cable. On the other hand, the 4K ultrafine only delivers 60 W of power, compared to the 87 W from the macbook 15" charger. This is a bit of a bummer for me, so I need to have my charger connected together with the monitor.

About the shipping estimate: I ordered it the 11th of november, with an estimate of 6-8 weeks. I got it the 25th, 2 weeks before my Macbook 15". My personal theory, is that since it is so cheap with the reduced price, they're just trying to get a lower demand by giving a ridiculous estimate. I mean, come on! People order more MacBooks than displays, but still the estimate on the displays are longer? Come on!
 
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Chparigi said:
Sure, I'll love to tell my views!

First, looking at the design, I actually think it is gorgeous! I love that the display is black, and not silver, unlike the previous Thunderbolt Displays.

The Image quality is of course superb, and though the website says that it is an 10-bit monitor, I actually see that it is a 10-bit monitor in the settings.

It is nice finally to have a monitor that works totally with the Mac, with the image being the same, and everything controlled from the Mac. It is also great that it only connects through one USB C cable. On the other hand, the 4K ultrafine only delivers 60 W of power, compared to the 87 W from the macbook 15" charger. This is a bit of a bummer for me, so I need to have my charger connected together with the monitor.

About the shipping estimate: I ordered it the 11th of november, with an estimate of 6-8 weeks. I got it the 25th, 2 weeks before my Macbook 15". My personal theory, is that since it is so cheap with the reduced price, they're just trying to get a lower demand by giving a ridiculous estimate. I mean, come on! People order more MacBooks than displays, but still the estimate on the displays are longer? Come on!
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for your reply! I just ordered one :D Got mid to late February as delivery date though haha. Let's hope it arrives sooner.

That all sounds very nice! Just what i'm after. I've had so many issues with non-apple "certified" external displays, now i just want something that works. I guess the 5k one would be nice due to the size, but it's too expensive for me.

The charging won't be a problem for me, as i'll be getting the 13".

That sounds like something Apple could do! Maybe i get it early January then, if i'm lucky :D
 
RobinInOR said:
Yes, I have. I haven't tested it with 10.12.2 yet, though. Last night was my test of sleep waking on battery.
10.12.1 I was having the same problem. Wiggling the cable sometimes helped :) , I noticed the connection wasn't always great and that would wake it up.

For grins, I was also attaching it to the right side of the laptop. With just the one monitor it shouldn't really make a difference, but see if it works better by attaching it on the left side?
Click to expand...

I just tried it in 10.12.2, but it didn't work. So I just wrote LG, and hoping that they might have an answer ;)
 
Thats a bummer. I've now tested a sleep/wake cycle overnight. Before, the 4k wouldnt always wake up. Yesterday i tested some short sleep cycles and it was fine. I then tested the overnight sleep-left the monitor plugged in, left some NAS drives attached, even left an old USB DVD drive plugged in. Any of those used to crash on wake. On 10.12.2 it woke up just fine, and the 4k did too.
I love this monitor. I dont do any heavy video/photo processing so I cant speak to color accuracy, but for everyday work Its perfect.
 
I have the opposite problem (could be user error) .... I have no way of closing my laptop and having the monitor go dark. For instance, if hit the top left Apple logo and choose sleep, the laptop and LG display go dark. If I then close the laptop, the display turns on. Seemingly the only way I can have both remain off is to tell the laptop to sleep, and then have it remain open all night (which I am not a fan of but am forced to do presently)
 
@samcow yeah, mine did the same yesterday. Never had the problem before, display always turned off when I closed the laptop (with my Magic accessories NOT connected, Bluetooth off!).

I updated to 10.12.2 yesterday, may be that it's related.
 
@samcow I tested again, and have to correct what I just wrote. Closing the laptop doesn’t turn off the monitor, even though clamshell mode shouldn’t work with no keyboard and mouse connected. But when I make the laptop sleep (from the menu bar or via shortcut), both screens turn off and stay like that even if I close the laptop.
 
Is there a site where LG 4K owners can send feedback to apple and LG re: all these issues (incl. lack of auto brightness, wake issues, USC C connectivity issues, etc) so they can address them? If not I'm tempted to return mine before the Jan. 8 extended return policy date...
 
user74246 said:
@samcow I tested again, and have to correct what I just wrote. Closing the laptop doesn’t turn off the monitor, even though clamshell mode shouldn’t work with no keyboard and mouse connected. But when I make the laptop sleep (from the menu bar or via shortcut), both screens turn off and stay like that even if I close the laptop.
Click to expand...

Hm interesting, when I select sleep and close the lid the LG screen will sometimes turn off also - however in the next 10 minutes it will always self turn back on (perhaps the macbook is doing something)
 
I got fed up about this issue, so I called up apple, and spoke to them. After doing the usual search for usual errors, he made me record a log-file where the incident would happen, which I sent to them afterwards.

This is super annoying for me, so I just hope that the solve this very quickly!
 
I see the same thing - when I close the laptop it seems to be in clamshell mode - the 4K stays on. It did that on 10.12.1 and it still does it o 10.12.2. I put the sleep button on the touch bar and sleep it from there.
 
Chparigi said:
GOOD NEWS! I just updated to 10.12.3 beta 1, and the problem seems to have been solved!
Click to expand...

thanks for starting this thread -- i had the same problem and was considering returning, but i'll wait for the 10.12.3 release and assume it will be fixed. in the meantime, i'll just unplug and replug from the macbook pro when i need to wake it.
 
I just wanted to throw out my experience and a bit of experimenting on this since there aren't many 4k specific threads.

I just got an Ultrafine 4k the other day, for use with my new 2016 15" MacBook Pro. I am seeing the wake issue, where if the display goes to sleep, it will not wake with my computer. After some experimenting, I've determined that the wake issue happens only (and always) when I am connected to both the display and my charger simultaneously. When only connected to the display, I don't have any issue and the display wakes immediately with the computer. I'm thinking of getting the Belkin USB-C to USB-C cable from Apple to see if that has any effect.
 
Chparigi said:
I have a Macbook 15" with touchbar which I just received, and I am using with my LG Ultrafine 4k display.

So the issue is, when the Macbook wakes from sleep, the Ultrafine 4k monitor still stays black, while the laptop still think it is connected. Have any of you encountered the same issue?
Click to expand...


Hi I’m having the same issue with my Thunderbolt Display. I’m quite confident it’s a Mac OS bug and not the monitor. I was able to rectify my issue by doing the following:

In System Preferences/Energy Saver, for the power adapter settings, untick all options except for “Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off”.

In System Preferences/Desktop & Screen Saver, ensure that the time set for the screen saver to start is less than the time for the display to turn off in Energy Saver/Power Adapter.

I have my display turning off in Energy Saver for Power Adapter after 15 mins. My screen saver is set to come on in 10mins.


Ever since I made these changes, I haven’t had the issue re-occur in 48+ hours.
 
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djon41 said:
I just wanted to throw out my experience and a bit of experimenting on this since there aren't many 4k specific threads.

I just got an Ultrafine 4k the other day, for use with my new 2016 15" MacBook Pro. I am seeing the wake issue, where if the display goes to sleep, it will not wake with my computer. After some experimenting, I've determined that the wake issue happens only (and always) when I am connected to both the display and my charger simultaneously. When only connected to the display, I don't have any issue and the display wakes immediately with the computer. I'm thinking of getting the Belkin USB-C to USB-C cable from Apple to see if that has any effect.
Click to expand...

I got the Belkin USB-C to USB-C 3.1 cable from Apple today. It seems to have solved my wake problem for now.
 
I just got my 4K Ultrafine today to use with 2016 MB 12". I noticed that in Chrome playing YouTube in 4K FULL screen crashes the Mac and display, kernel panic. The system reboots. Perhaps this is why Safari doesn't run YT videos in 4K?
 
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I had the exact same issues with two totally different monitors - a different LG 4K screen and a Dell one. I'm guessing its down to some sort of combination of drivers and/or USB-C. I did try different cables but that didn't resolve it. I have seen people suggesting the Monoprice USBC cables are worth trying though and in some specific cases they helped where Belkin ones made no difference.

Welcome to the days of early adoption.
 
I tried turning off hardware acceleration. It didn't crash the Mac, but the video was choppy. I also tried turning off Flash player in Chrome, that crashed the Mac as well. Chrome in 4K is just bad on Mac... :(
 
Chparigi said:
I have a Macbook 15" with touchbar which I just received, and I am using with my LG Ultrafine 4k display.

So the issue is, when the Macbook wakes from sleep, the Ultrafine 4k monitor still stays black, while the laptop still think it is connected. Have any of you encountered the same issue?
Click to expand...

I have a Macbook 2015 12" and purchased a LG Ultrafine K4 2 days ago. Since that time I've unplugged the power cord from the MacBook 2 times to watch TV in another room. Both times the screen was black when I opened the book and the book was unresponsive to poking. Attempts to restart with the power button failed -- the screen hung half way on the startup white horizontal line. I booted into safe mode, ran disk utility repairs (nothing showed bad), then restarted the machine. One time it restarted normally, one time with video glitches - another restart fixed that one.

All I have plugged into the Ultrafine is the power cord.

I called Apple -- they suggested SMC reboot, which I've done. I'm about 20 feet from the router and have power nap currently off.

I'll update if I figure anything out.

Update 4/2017 -- I just got my MacBook back from Apple -- turns out the hard drive was bad and replaced under apple care (Logic board). So my apologies -- the MacBook 2015 was the cause of my problems, not the LG Ultrafine 4K.

I've had the MacBook for the last two weeks with the LG hookup -- no problems of any sort.
 
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My previous comment mentioned that switching to the Belkin USB-C cable fixed my problem, but it seems to have cropped up again, though in a different way.

With the included LG cable, the problem happened consistently every time the computer slept, and when woken, the computer acted as if the display was still attached (i.e. the mouse could be moved between the built-in monitor and the Ultrafine, window arrangements stayed as if an external was still there, but no picture was displayed).

The new symptoms seem to happen intermittently only starting in the last week or so, and behave as if the monitor is completely shut off (i.e. all windows have been moved to the built-on monitor, mouse is restricted to built-in, etc.) The only indication that the monitor is still recognized is that an external HDD I have attached to it is still accessible even though the screen is black. I've also had one instance of the screen just turning off randomly while still working. In all these situations the only fix is to restart the computer (unplugging the USB-C cable or the monitor power cable have no effect).

Not sure what could have changed to make this crop up randomly like this. Will try an SMC reset and see what happens.

EDIT: Now have had three more instances in the last hour of the display shutting down while using it. Resetting SMC and NVRAM did not help.
 
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