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New M4 mini: LED not breathing.

Populus

Populus

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 24, 2012
6,465
9,008
Spain, Europe
Guys, we have to talk. This is a turn off for me, not decisive of course, but a disappointment nonetheless.

I’ve left my M4 Pro Mac mini sleeping, and the white (bigger) LED on the front remains on like it is when it is awake.

I’m not sure what’s the behavior on the Mac Studio, but on my M4 Pro Mac mini, the white LED is constantly on.

Both on my old Unibody 2010 MacBook Pro and my 2014 the white LED on the front starts “breathing” (going brighter and dimmer repeatedly) once I set it to sleep. And this behavior not only was more useful to know what the Mac was doing, it was also aesthetically much more pleasing.

Is this the only behavior? Or can it be changed in settings? Anyone else disappointed by this?

Don’t get me wrong, the machine is still awesome, but I miss the breathing LED.
 
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Populus said:
Anyone else disappointed by this?
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I thought I was crazy but apparently it's the same for on and sleep.

I also remember on my 2008 Aluminium MacBook (non-Pro) the light used to be invisible when it was off, I think they used to laser tiny holes in the aluminium for the light to shine through, now you can see the area where the LED is.

Not a huge deal, but I was also expecting the light to breathe when in sleep.
 
Tea-Aholic said:
Not a huge deal, but I was also expecting the light to breathe when in sleep.
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Exactly, not a huge deal, as Apple probably made it this way to lower the costs. As you said, the LED was visible thanks to laser-made micro-holes, and putting a white LED was probably much cheaper to manufacture.

However, I miss the breathing animation and I’d prefer the light to be off when the Mac mini is on and not sleeping. Just a quick way to know if the Mac is doing something while sleeping.

On my old Intel MBP and Mac mini, while sleeping, sometimes the light stopped breathing and remained on, and that meant that the Mac was doing some background work or being accessed while the screen was off. Now, there’s no way to know what’s happening.
 
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Fluffyk said:
They really removed it believe me. It made me sad when I bought one. It's a common practice with Apple now to remove nice touches like this.
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Well, at least they resurrected MagSafe. But I don’t think this nice touch from the Steve Jobs era is coming back.
 
Fluffyk said:
I think that too. I think they’re gonna remove the light all together in the future.
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Another nice touch with a similar implementation on the aluminum body of a Mac was the battery indicator that on the unibody MacBook Pro (2009 onwards) showed the battery charge level of the laptop, with nice little green lights, without having to boot it. Those were also laser micro-perforated into the MacBook Pro aluminum chasis.

By the way, talking about little details removed from our beloved Macs, do you think the infrared receptor that old MacBook Pros and Mac minis had would be useful nowadays? I’ve never used it, neither on the 2010 MBP nor on my 2014 Mac mini.
 
This is Cook's Apple all over, really. Taking away or nerfing the little details because they don't matter...to an accountant. The writing was on the wall when they removed the pulsing LED and battery test button from the MacBook Pro in 2012. In fairness I suppose on current form we should be grateful they didn't put the LED on the bottom 🤦‍♂️
 
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Yeah ... first they came for our HDD/SSD activity lights, and we did nothing. Then they took our STBY breathing lights, and we said nothing. Then one day there were NO lights and now WTF are we going to do?
 
DELLsFan said:
Yeah ... first they came for our HDD/SSD activity lights, and we did nothing. Then they took our STBY breathing lights, and we said nothing. Then one day there were NO lights and now WTF are we going to do?
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Touch it to see if it is warm.
 
I miss the breathing LED, but yeah the last Mac I remember having with it was my 12" PowerBook G4. I can't remember if the 2008 17" MBP had it or not. It was always soothing to watch the light gradually light up my bedroom and then fade to near darkness while I was falling asleep.
 
I have to say I'm finding it hard to know if the mini is in sleep mode, especially given the light on my external OWC 1M2 enclosure is sometimes* flashing when I return to the machine a while after it's supposedly in sleep mode 🤷‍♂️

*flashing seems to be the only mode.
 
matt303 said:
I have to say I'm finding it hard to know if the mini is in sleep mode, especially given the light on my external OWC 1M2 enclosure is sometimes* flashing when I return to the machine a while after it's supposedly in sleep mode 🤷‍♂️

*flashing seems to be the only mode.
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Yeah, that drives me crazy as well. Not knowing if the Mac is sleeping or just doing stuff with the screen off. If it was disconnected from the internet I would be much less worried, but being 24/7 connected, when I come to the room in the middle of the night and see it “awake” and with the router light blinking, I kinda worry
 
Populus said:
Yeah, that drives me crazy as well. Not knowing if the Mac is sleeping or just doing stuff with the screen off. If it was disconnected from the internet I would be much less worried, but being 24/7 connected, when I come to the room in the middle of the night and see it “awake” and with the router light blinking, I kinda worry
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I don't understand this. Why not turn your computer off when you retire in the evening? I do. I've done it that way for decades. Then, in the morning, I simply turn it on. There are numerous ways to make the power button more easily accessible on the new mini. No way will I leave a computer on all night when I'm not working on it.
 
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The led is really annoying in any state of use. Wish I could turn it off. Thankfully it’s so small I hide it behind a picture frame.
 
OWC_TAL said:
I'd have to close all my 1000 chrome tabs! :eek:
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You can do like I do (in other browsers tho, I don’t use Chrome): Set the browser to initiate with all the open tabs from previous session.

That way, if I have 647 tabs open and I close Safari/Firefox/Brave, when I open the browser all the 647 tabs are still there!
 
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Apple unfortunately removed the breathing LED years ago. It was a great and useful feature. But technically Apple Silicon Macs never really sleep. It took me a while to understand Apple's 'sleep' logic for Apple Silicone Macs, but then it finally hit me. They kind of 'sleep' like iOS devices. Not much.

On a Mac mini, it won't actually sleep until you manually put it to sleep. Sure, the display will turn off after a certain amount of user inactivity, but the Mac itself is still running. You have to force it to sleep via the Apple Menu. And fun fact, even after you do that, the fan will continue to run. I think it eventually turns off?

Same is true for Apple Silicon MacBooks. It will only truly 'sleep', even if lightly to do all those macOS-y things while it's snoozing, if you close the lid. If you want to leave the lid open, you'll have to manually set it to sleep via the Apple Menu. I am not sure why Apple cannot add a true sleep option after a certain amount of inactive time in System Settings, but Apple likes to be Apple.

I guess since the majority of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone, all other products will mimic it's operation to some degree as they know their largest customer base is iPhone users, so bringing them to the Mac with a familiar look and feel is key. It's funny, the iPhone started out as mimicking the Mac and putting all those Mac features in your pocket. It seems like the opposite is true today as the iPhone user base dwarfs the Mac user base. I personally do not see this as a good thing for us legacy Apple enthusiasts, but our feels do not take priority over Apple's stock price.
 
Sowelu said:
On a Mac mini, it won't actually sleep until you manually put it to sleep. Sure, the display will turn off after a certain amount of user inactivity, but the Mac itself is still running. You have to force it to sleep via the Apple Menu. And fun fact, even after you do that, the fan will continue to run. I think it eventually turns off?
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I just purchased Mini M4 and it seems it is not sleeping even if I manually put it into the sleep mode. Screen is off but thats it. When I wake it up in the morning my all ssh sessions are still alive:/ I encounter several "disk was not ejected properly" messages as I suspect disks go to sleep, but mini is not:/ Poor implementation from Apple. If I put mac to sleep, I want it to sleep and not do something in the background:/
 
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