Macbook Pro freezes after sleep

Question

The above mentioned Macbook Pro Retina (Mid 2015) with SSD, running Sierra seems to be freezing most of the times, after attempting to "wake" it up from sleep. The situation has the following observed characteristics:

• Seems to "wake up" (you can see the backlight of the screen activating) but the screen remains black
• Sometimes the mouse pointer may appear but the screen remains black
• Some times it wakes up, gives the login screen but freezes (spinning ball) after logging in
• Happens only after some time has passed (perhaps 15') after initiating the sleep.
• It has higher possibility to happen when connected to power
• Thought there may be a conflict with the Energy Saver Display-off settings but keeps the same behaviour in all possible different settings including when choosing not to allow the display to switch off.

In all the above cases the system has to be hard rebooted by pressing the power button.

I would welcome any ideas on what may be wrong but also advice on where to look (log files?) to debug the situation.

Answer 1

The first things I'd try are to reset both the NVRAM and SMC in that order. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected (so, unplug your external display) and make sure you use the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

1. Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
2. Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
3. Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
4. Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

1. Shut down your computer
2. Keep the power cable plugged in.
3. Press at the same time:
   • optioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard)
   • shift (on the right side of the keyboard for computers with the T2 security chip; on the left side otherwise)
   • power button
4. Keep holding for 10 seconds and then let go
5. Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists.

Answer 2

My mac kept freezing after upgrading the SSD, which forced me to upgrade to Mojave.

Resetting NVRAM and SMC didn't help for me, but I saw other threads that mentioned the hibernatefile, which is in /var/vm/sleepimage, and advised to delete it.

On Mojave, you can't delete it without de-activating SIP, but another hint said you could Eject the /var/vm/sleepimage like a DMG through the Finder.

I did that, and on reboot, a new swapfile0 showed up and I haven't had any problem since so far, so my guess is that the swapfile was missing and causing issues on wake up from sleep.

Answer 3

I had this problem too after updating to 10.13.4 on a MBP Late 2013. I did a clean install and the problem still occurred. What helped for me is to switch off FileVault or disk encryption. After this, everything ran smooth again and no freezes occurred anymore. Apparently FileVault and the newer APFS don't get along quite well yet, and freezes like these are one of the symptons.

Answer 4

Ive been struggling with this for two days and I found the resolution for 10.13.6

You will find this problem ONLY happens when your MacBook Pro is plugged in and it relates to log out after x amount of time.

My Fix: Go to System Preferences / Security & Privacy / Advanced... then turn OFF Log out after x minutes of inactivity.

Fixed.

Answer 5

Connecting to an external monitor almost always works for me.

I have had a problem with the same symptoms. Usually, the system will "wake up" display the lock screen either with the password box or not, then the screen goes blank and it will not wake up. It seems to happen more often when I am plugging in power very near the time I am waking up the OS.

Same symptoms from that point onward:

• The backlight will light up when enter/shift/mouse are used
• momentary power switch touch will turn the backlight off
• usually, the mouse is not displayed
• usually only happens after it has been asleep for some time(30+ minutes?)

I have had this problem on multiple MacBook pro 15" machines, I have had it on a 2011, and a 2012. I have had this on multiple OS versions going back at least 4 years, maybe longer.

Connecting to an external monitor almost always works. Usually, the MacBook pro built-in screen will not be recognized until the unlock process is complete.

If it matters, my external monitor is a display port, DELL U3011 Display, 30-inch (2560 x 1600). Perhaps its the use of the discrete graphics chip that is the key? That is just speculation.

Answer 6

Not sure if my problem is the exact same, but my trackpad freezes after my macbook pro goes to sleep. I haven't discovered the root problem but have figured out a hack to solve it. I am using a macbook pro with the touchpad at the top. I click the siri button and say anything I want, or nothing at all. Once Siri closes, my trackpad works again.

Answer 7

I've also encountered a similar "freeze after sleep" behavior. This happened on my Macbook Pro 16" 2019 (with the T2 chip) after upgrading os to 12.5. It actually happened to me several times before as a results of other system upgrades, and even on my previous MBP 2015 - Apple, get your upgrades right!!!

Inspecting the system log files I could see it was indeed related to the sleep-wake failure /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Sleep Wake Failure_*.diag

Eventually it stopped happening after multiple attempts of resetting the SMC and NVRAM (like stated above in this answer

I think I did it about 20 times, probably with slight modifications each time. In addition I also shut down the Docker desktop and made sure it doesn't start on boot (this was suggested somewhere else).

Honestly it all feels like a lot of voodoo. I might as well have said a prayer and danced around the laptop a little. Most important, stay positive and believe that it will eventually work out!