I’m posting to see if anyone else has run into a strange and unsettling behavior on my recent Apple-silicon Macs. I’ve now experienced it multiple times across two different machines (only once on a M4 MacBook Pro, probably 5-6 times on a M3 MacBook Pro), and I’m curious whether this is more widespread or if others have additional insight.
What happens is this: occasionally, when I open the lid of my MacBook after it has been sleeping, the machine appears completely powered off. The screen is black, the keyboard backlight is off, and the trackpad and keyboard are totally unresponsive. Closing and reopening the lid does nothing. Plugging or unplugging power does nothing. Waiting several minutes does nothing. At first glance, it looks exactly like the Mac shut itself down.
However, it hasn’t actually powered off. The only way to recover is to press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds to force a shutdown, and then power it back on. After rebooting, everything comes back normally. There’s no crash dialog, no panic report, and no message saying the Mac restarted because of a problem.
I spent some time digging into logs to see what happened. The reboot history shows only the next boot, with no record of a shutdown beforehand. There is no “previous shutdown cause” logged, even when checking at info level. There are no kernel panic files. Power management logs show normal sleep and wake behavior leading up to the event, and the filesystem is clean. In other words, macOS never got a chance to log anything at all, which strongly suggests the system was hung below the operating system rather than crashing inside it.
I’ve now seen this behavior on both an M3 MacBook and an M4 MacBook, which makes me think it’s not a single-machine issue. Both systems are otherwise very stable, and this only happens rarely, but it has now repeated enough times to be noticeable.
My best guess is that this is a firmware-level power or sleep-state hang. Something appears to go wrong during a deep sleep or wake transition, leaving the system in a state where macOS never resumes execution. Because the OS never comes back, watchdogs don’t fire and nothing gets logged. From the user’s point of view, the machine looks dead even though it isn’t fully powered off. In that state, software recovery doesn’t seem possible, and a forced power-off via the hardware button is the only way out.
A few important clarifications: this doesn’t appear to be a kernel panic, a filesystem problem, a bad app, or user error. There’s been no data loss, and APFS handles the forced shutdown cleanly. Deep standby is already disabled on my machines, so this doesn’t seem to be a simple configuration issue either.
I’m mainly posting to compare notes. Have others seen something similar on Apple-silicon Macs? If so, did it look like the machine was powered off when it wasn’t? Did holding the power button recover it? Which chip were you on (M1, M2, M3, M4), and how often has it happened? I’m interested in any alternative theories or observations.
This is rare and not catastrophic, but it’s unnerving when it happens, especially since there’s no visible explanation afterward. I’d appreciate any data points or ideas others might have.
What happens is this: occasionally, when I open the lid of my MacBook after it has been sleeping, the machine appears completely powered off. The screen is black, the keyboard backlight is off, and the trackpad and keyboard are totally unresponsive. Closing and reopening the lid does nothing. Plugging or unplugging power does nothing. Waiting several minutes does nothing. At first glance, it looks exactly like the Mac shut itself down.
However, it hasn’t actually powered off. The only way to recover is to press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds to force a shutdown, and then power it back on. After rebooting, everything comes back normally. There’s no crash dialog, no panic report, and no message saying the Mac restarted because of a problem.
I spent some time digging into logs to see what happened. The reboot history shows only the next boot, with no record of a shutdown beforehand. There is no “previous shutdown cause” logged, even when checking at info level. There are no kernel panic files. Power management logs show normal sleep and wake behavior leading up to the event, and the filesystem is clean. In other words, macOS never got a chance to log anything at all, which strongly suggests the system was hung below the operating system rather than crashing inside it.
I’ve now seen this behavior on both an M3 MacBook and an M4 MacBook, which makes me think it’s not a single-machine issue. Both systems are otherwise very stable, and this only happens rarely, but it has now repeated enough times to be noticeable.
My best guess is that this is a firmware-level power or sleep-state hang. Something appears to go wrong during a deep sleep or wake transition, leaving the system in a state where macOS never resumes execution. Because the OS never comes back, watchdogs don’t fire and nothing gets logged. From the user’s point of view, the machine looks dead even though it isn’t fully powered off. In that state, software recovery doesn’t seem possible, and a forced power-off via the hardware button is the only way out.
A few important clarifications: this doesn’t appear to be a kernel panic, a filesystem problem, a bad app, or user error. There’s been no data loss, and APFS handles the forced shutdown cleanly. Deep standby is already disabled on my machines, so this doesn’t seem to be a simple configuration issue either.
I’m mainly posting to compare notes. Have others seen something similar on Apple-silicon Macs? If so, did it look like the machine was powered off when it wasn’t? Did holding the power button recover it? Which chip were you on (M1, M2, M3, M4), and how often has it happened? I’m interested in any alternative theories or observations.
This is rare and not catastrophic, but it’s unnerving when it happens, especially since there’s no visible explanation afterward. I’d appreciate any data points or ideas others might have.
