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I have a Macbook Air M1 (Arm architecture) with Big Sur 11.5.1 that I use for work.

I use an external monitor and so have the macbook closed all the time - it's set to not sleep when the lid is closed.

Often when I come to it in the morning, it's shut down, as far as I can tell. I can't start it just by pressing the power button, I have to hold the power button down for 10 seconds. This is odd because it's the sort of thing you would (i'd have thought) only have to do when it's actually on, so it's more like it's frozen in a 'black' on state, and i'm hard-resetting it, rather than it's turned itself off and i'm starting it.

It's a bit of a pain because my work environment is quite complicated and even though the macbook does a pretty good job of reopening apps and files and stuff, I still have to do quite a bit of setup to get back to where I was the previous day.

If this is a deliberate feature then I can live with it I guess, though it doesn't explain why it happens some times and not others. But i'd still like to know what's happening.

Can anyone explain this? thanks

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  • Check the log for the shutdown cause. However, if you have to hold the power button for 10 seconds to boot it again, it sounds like your Mac is in a hung state.
    – Allan
    Commented Feb 24, 2023 at 15:23
  • @Allan that's outputting the headers for a process table, but with nothing in it, which suggests that it wasn't shut down by the OS, which is in keeping with me having to hard-reset it. Which like you say suggests it's hanging. I wonder what I can do to unhang it. I've tried various keyboard stuff, pressing the power briefly, pressing the function key that switches between displays in case it was just the display output that was stuck, but nothing i've tried yet wakes it up.
    – Max Williams
    Commented Mar 1, 2023 at 12:43
  • A hung state is just that..hung. The CPU can no longer be “interrupted” by devices like the keyboard because it’s lo longer responding to requests the keyboard makes. Boot into Safe Mode. That will start up with no 3rd party drivers or software loaded. See if the problem continues. If it does, then you might have a hardware issue that requires further investigation
    – Allan
    Commented Mar 1, 2023 at 13:34
  • Ok i'll try that thanks. it's a pain because it's an intermittent problem anyway so i'd need to stay in safe mode for several days at least.
    – Max Williams
    Commented Mar 2, 2023 at 9:05

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