Usually, when you turn your computer off and leave the display on, it goes into sleep mode to save power. Under normal conditions, the monitor will turn itself on when you turn on your computer. However, it seems the M1-powered Mac Mini is having major issues waking itself back up.
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Mac mini wake issues: what to do
The only reported way for users to wake up their displays is to unplug the connection and plug it back in. This is obviously a major hassle to do repeatedly throughout your workday if you get up to do other things and your system goes into standby mode forcing the monitor into sleep mode. This issue seems to affect the HDMI port, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt input, so it’s become a major problem that appears to be M1 related as the issue wasn’t reported on the previous non-M1 Mac mini. This adds to the list of display-related complaints, including weird pink squares appearing randomly on monitors while connected to the M1 Mac mini.