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Your Mac mini M1 won't wake your displays, huh?
Well, my intel MacBook Pro kills USB-C to HDMI dongles. This is Tim Cook's apple.
 
This affected the DTK as well. Apparently it’s a well-known issue that didn’t get fixed in the beta.
 
I have an LG 32 inch 4K monitor and I find that power cycling the monitor causes it to wake.
 
M1 seems to be very crippled. external display (using the Apple recommended LG UltraFine) and it doesn't wake up immediately or at all sometimes, restart or startup it takes 30 seconds to display most times. constant slow downs, even using a few safari windows, mail app, and slack it seems to run sluggish. not sure if it's related to the display or not. also external mouse doesn't handle left-click & drag. not sure if its their driver or something up with the M1 as all this is a non-issue on my intel MacBook Pro
 
Just saying I’m also having the same issue for my second monitor connected via the dongle. My current solution is just replugging the dongle whenever it happens.
 
Not exclusively an M1 issue. I've had the same problem with the (otherwise brilliant) 2018 hexcore model.
 
I had a Mac mini M1 and ended up returning it. The main reason was because 8GB of memory wasn't enough for me, and I ended up getting a 16GB M1 MacBook Air (which works flawlessly). I did have some display issues with the Mac mini while I had it. Connected to my Dell P2415Q monitor via HDMI, it would only output in YPbPr, not RBG. It would also randomly flicker at times, and sometimes wouldn't turn off (or would immediately turn back on) when I tried to put the computer in sleep mode. It also would take forever to turn on when turning the computer on, sometimes not until the login screen appeared. It just didn't feel quite right, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a factor in my decision to return the machine. I'm satisfied with my $500 used late 2014 5K Retina iMac as a desktop computer, for now.
 
I also had an issue, but this has since fixed it. Maybe give it try? I usually manually put my macs to sleep anyways, so this was a no brainer. Monitor and mac mini wakes up when prompted, along with my mbp ‘11 (used as a 2nd monitor via lunadisplay dongle on the mac mini M1).
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I have a M1 Mac mini 16/1TB and a 32 Samsung 4k monitor...ZERO issues.
I have an i7 Mac Mini, 64TB/1TB and an older HP LP2475w monitor with ZERO issues. I also have a 27UD68-P with ZERO issues: both work also from sleep with ZERO issues on Linux.

I'm not running Big Sur as a musician I want my 3rd party OEM hardware/plugins/audio interface by Apogee Digital [Ensemble] and more to all just work and not break my workflow because of choosing to be an early adopter of a product that is clearly not fully flushed out.

Apple could have solved this issue by collaborating with major audio/video companies and flushing stuff out before they pulled the trigger. Awake from Sleep is something they should have done in their sleep from day one.
 
I’m in this one, have a Dell display and a USB-C to DisplayPort cable but the Mac mini will wake up the display but then no signal detected and back to sleep. Do it again and usually it’ll come on. It’s like a 50-50 chance. Today though I did also end up with the pink boxes issue. I do also have both a USB-C to HDMI and an HDMI cable so perhaps I should give those a try to see if any are more reliable.
 
I had the exact same issue with my quad core i7 mini with DisplayPort and my 34" QWHD Samsung screen.
This was not an issue with the original Mac OS for the system, but came about with 10.12 and up.
If my display did not wake, I could sometimes wake it by turning the monitor on/off, sometimes with the DisplayPort cable, ...
Most often, if I could not get it going in a few minutes, I was forced to do a hard shutdown ...
Every OS update, I'd file a bug report.
This was also not an isolated incident. Other people had the same struggles.
Samsung points to Apple. Apple points to Samsung. Samsung points back to Apple.
Apple never fixed it.
I got so tired of it, and also ran into the primary ssd giving the ghost (too many hard shutdowns??) that I bought another Mac mini.

PS: no matter of tweaking user settings addressed it, it was not an issue with hdmi and lower resolution screens, purely tunderbolt/displayport, tried different cables too ... no dice.
If I booted into the original hard drive with the old OS, it would wake the samsund display just fine.
 
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I need to tap a shift key and move my mouse before the M1 Mini starts to wake up the Samsung 4K monitor - AND it takes 4-6 seconds for the monitor to actually display anything. It's my only complaint with the M1 Mini :-(
 
A quick press of the power button on my M1 MacMini does indeed wake the computer and my HDMI display. Obviously not the most elegant solution since I have to physically access the machine, but it does work for me (YMMV). It took me a while to figure that one out.

Also, I had a devil of a time creating an Administrator account that would let me administrate the M1 until I stumbled across the “Erase Mac...” process while booted to “Startup Options” which seems to be the new Recovery Mode on M1 Macs.
 
This problem has been around since 2018 for the intel mini i7 too.. problems started to appear around os 10.14.0.... apple replace my motherboard, (did not solve), and after a few os updates to 10.14.6, external monitors woke up reliably After sleep, short shutdown or even lengthy shudown.

there is a apple forum on this issue with 100s to 1000s of discussions. Every combination of monitor, cable is addressed.... at the end of the day, if a user found something stable and working, that was the best that could be done.

I updated to 11.2.. whamo, same loss of external monitors. I spent 4 hours of frustration switching cables, switching monitors, restarts, hdmi vs usb c, etc., all to no avail. Grrrrrr

I updated yesterday to 11.3. Presto! External monitors work again. But the usb mentor flickers out for a second or so, about once every hour. Random.

clearly, the mini hardware bus has issues... which can be partially addressed by the os. But 11.2 broke what was working well with 11.0 and 10.15. 11.3 makes it better but not 100%.

as soon as iMac m1series come out, I am buying and leaving the i7 mini as a relic.
 
I have that problem too. I have the MBA M1 and using OWC Dock to connect with the LG Ultra-Fine 32 I have to unplug the thunderbolt 3 cable and reconnect it. Never happened with my MB Pro 15, 2018
 
Possibly unrelated, but I have this issue with my DisplayLink adapter (connected via USB-C) after rebooting my M1 Mini. It fairly consistently requires the cable to be reconnected to the Mini, sometimes 2 or 3 times before the displays are recognized.
 
From what I experienced apple did mostly good with the CPU/RAM sides of this, but most problems seem to be on the GPU side.
I really hope this will all be fixable with patches, but I'm afraid it's more a part of how their first apple silicon chip was designed
 
I have the M1 MacBook Pro and when connected to an LG 27UK850-W 27" 4K, I needed to disconnect and reconnect the computer to get the screen to wake. This occurred whether I was connected via a CalDigit docking station or not. However, when I connected the laptop to an LG 5K (HKN62LL/A) monitor via a CalDigit docking station, it works flawlessly.
I have this monitor connected to a 2018 MBP, and I have always had the same issue.
 
I have the same problem with my 2019 MacBook Pro with an 8th gen i5 and 8gb ram.
Usually every time i hit the keyboard it would wake now I have to open the lid of the MacBook and hold down the power button in order for the screen to wake
 
My M1 Mini w/Lenovo 27" 1440p monitor has no problems waking the monitor, but the M1 Mini itself rarely ever goes to sleep. I gave up caring about when when I discovered the M1 uses about 5W when idle in the first place! I can afford 5W running 24/7.
 
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