External keyboard stops working after some time on MBP 2020 (Catalina 10.15.5)

Question

The problem is as follows. I attach an external keyboard to my MacBook Pro 13 inch 2020 running Catalina 10.15.5 using an Apple dongle. After a while, (this could be 10 minutes or an hour or so) keystrokes are not registered anymore. The keyboard still lights up so there is power going to it.

I don't know if it is relevant, but the only things attached to the MBP are power and an HDMI cable (plugged into the same dongle as the USB keyboard).

Steps to reproduce:

• Attach external keyboard (although the same happens with a usb mouse and usb microphone)
• Use the keyboard for about 10 minutes to an hour
• Notice that keystrokes are not registered

How to solve temporarily: A full reboot (so no sleep)

Steps I tried to fix without reboot:

• Reset SMC
• Reset NVRAM (I have tried these since every apple support page I saw mentioned them).
• Made sure the keyboard still works on other devices
• Tried another non-Apple dongle on another port
• Tried the same Apple dongle on different port. The interesting about this one is that the display that is attached to the MBP using the same dongle is not recognized as "detached" so macOS still thinks it is attached.

The only other relevant observation I could make is that in the system report the keyboard is still listed under USB.

I hope I have mentioned everything, if anything is missing please let me know.

Answer 1

To answer my own question:

The problem is not related to either my dongle or my keyboard. The problem seems with USB 2.0 support on the MBP 2020 models.

Currently there is no fix yet (18-06-2020). See link below to an article that describes the same problem.

https://9to5mac-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/9to5mac.com/2020/06/17/users-reporting-usb-2-0-compatiblity-issues-with-2020-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air/amp/?usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D&amp_js_v=0.1