MacBook Pro freezing after inactivity

I'm having this exact issue with my MacBook Pro Early 2015 in Catalina beta 5. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly causes it, but after a few minutes of not interacting with the computer, the trackpad can no longer be clicked, keyboard doesn't appear to work, and the display freezes. The only option is to hold the power button to restart.

Each of the 3 times this has happened I've been running Safari, the latest Xcode beta (5) + simulator, Music, Terminal, Sketch, and Visual Studio Code. On AC power, with iPhone connected via USB. I haven't been able to duplicate the freezing in Safe Mode.

Edit: Just tested again. I disabled screensaver to see if it had any effect, and it still froze exactly 6 minutes and 8 seconds after I left it alone.

Edit 2: Again: 6 minutes, 17 seconds.

Edit 3: Unplugged power. 18+ minutes, no freeze.

Edit 1: IMDPersistenceAgent seems to be the one ... any clue?

Same problem on my MacBook Air Early 2015 with Catalina beta 5.

Have added new user and work with that user.

Problem solved for me.

Hope, its usefull for all.

Early 2015 Macbook. Same issue. Locks up when on power and no activity. The back of the Macbook gets hot at the top near the hinge. This started in beta 4 and continues in beta 5. I reinstalled Mojave and the problem went away. I then installed 10.15 beta 5 again and the problem returned.

Looks like something is screwed with Catalina's power management code.

Exactly the same here, with MacBook 8,1 (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015): when left alone for a few minutes it becomes totally unresponsive and the only way forward is to force swith off or reboot (by pressing the Power key for several seconds). When that happens, the back lid is quite hot. This was with the MacBook in closed-display mode plugged into a LG Ultrafine 4K monitor, which provides power to it. This all started when installing Public Beta 4 (19A526h).

Same thing on my Macbook Air Early 2015.

Gglad to hear it isn't just my MacBook.

Progress update: resetting the SMC seems (so far) to have solved the issue. Immediately after resetting the SMC, the Mac was incapable of setting secure connections up (no connection to https sites in Safari, no authentication in streaming apps or antivirus software, and System Prefs > Apple ID claiming new authentication was required); I do no know whether that is related. Anyway, this again was solved by signing out in Apple ID; the process was buggy, two attempts were necessary, but after doing that and restarting everything was OK: still signed in in Apple ID, https connections and authentication working, and (so far) no freeze when the Mac is left alone for several minutes. To be on the safe side, I also set the display off time to 2 hours in Energy Saver prefs for Power Adapter.

Same issue here. MacBook Pro (retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) 2.9 core i5 16Gb RAM. Simply adding details in the event that Apple checks out this thread. -Thanks

False hope: resetting the SMC didn't change things, the Mac still freezes when left alone for some time. It may just be the longer display-off time in the Energy Saver prefs that increased the time before the freeze. Hope Apple fixes the bug quick, as affected Macs are close to unusable, especially for Time Machine backups.

I have the same issue here!

Macbook Pro Early 2015.

Apple please help!

This happend on my Early 2015 MBP as well. The latest update (19A526h) fixed it!

Same thing on mine Early 2015 MacBook Air. Both on beta 4 and 5.
But today I managed to discover the issue which crashes my Mac, I think it's something about Photos app. I'm using iCloud Photo Library, I have pretty massive library (about 63K photos) and "Optimize disk space" option enabled.

Anyway, I launched a MacBook, opened Activity Monitor app, set on CPU tab and processes sorted by the % of CPU usage, and CleanMyMac widget to have the info about CPU usage and temperature, and I left the MacBook alone to reproduce the thing that I'm not using it. Suddenly the process called "photolibraryd" appeared first on the list, taking 142% of CPU (idk how's that even possible). I remember that lastly when I got to the photos app it was saying on the bottom of photos view that it's "sorting my photos".

And I think it does make some sence actually, some of you were talking that this bug doesn't occur when the Mac is disconected from the power supply, and Photos app wasn't taking any of backgroud actions when the Mac is on battery, so I think this operation is not being taken as well.

I encourage you to test it out on your Macs as well, maybe it's a major problem, or maybe it's just mine and yours are being triggered by something else.

Sorry, but photoslibraryd can't take the machine down, unless you (or someone else) can notice it having some memory leak and consuming more memory than available. A process consuming too much memory and forcing the swapfile to grow too much is a good candidate to a system freeze, but I personally haven't seen any memory leaks on photoslibraryd, and I have almost 2TB on the cloud and 155K photos.

142% is perfectly normal. That follows the unix style of measuring 100% of one core, so 142% means it's used "1.42 CPUs". If you have an i5 with 2 cores, 4 with hiperthreading, you can see processes consuming 390% of the CPU (it will never reach 400), and with a 4 core (8 hyperthreads) it's possible to see almost 800%, and with the new 6 code, even almost 1200% of CPU.

This crash, from what I see on the logs, is somehow related to the screen saver, and to display resolution switching whe it tries to wake up and gets confused with the external monitor. I have also seen the machine not switching from the internal Intel GPU into the dedicated GPU, which is used for the external monitor, so in my case if feels like the system is idle, and when it wakes up, it locks up trying to switch the dedicated GPU, and entering a dead loop failing to do it.

Disabling the screen saver completely seemed to have helpmed me for some days. And then Friday it crashed again.

Having the same issue with my 2017 MacBook Air. Resetting SMC did nothing but I created a new user on my system and when logged into that user the issue has not happened, going on 48 hours now. As soon as I log back into my original user account I can leave it idle for maybe 6 miutes before it becomes unresponisive and the fans sound like they are going to cause the machine to take flight.

MaksPlus based on my experimental diagnosis I believe you are correct in that the photoslibraryd daemon appears to cause some interaction with the system after a period of user inactivity. I've been able to stop the freezing from occuring by moving aside the com.apple.photolibraryd.plist located the the /System/Library/LaunchAgents folder located on the boot volume. The moving aside of the plist file needs to be done under Recovery Mode using the terminal app. To accomplish the move I created a new folder called "LaunchAgents (Disabled)" and used the "mv" command to move the plist file from the LaunchAgents folder to my "LaunchAgents (Disabled)" folder. I then rebooted, logged in and observed the system did not freeze while runnning the screensaver for more than one hours time. To verify my conclusion and repeatability I moved back the plist file to the LaunchAgents folder once again using Recovery Mode and rebooted to allow the daemon to start again at boot. After logging in and letting my screensaver start I observed a hard system freeze once again on my MacBook Pro 2015 after a few minutes. I'm not interesting in using the photos app at this time so disabling the daemon is of no consequence for me. I would rather have a stable system I can do my testing on. This seems to be a weird issue to say the lease ... Let's hope it's resolved in the next beta!

Created feedback FB6917382 documenting the findings and workaround.

I closed iCloud Photos and my problem solved😉

After reading this, I've disabled iCloud Photos on my MacBook 2015 and the issue is gone. No freezing while inactive on power.

I have now disabled photo's in system icloud panel and after a reboot the issue seems to have gone away photolibraryd is not longer spiking with memory or cpu usage and the system seems stable. Time will tell.

Hi, I have a macbook pro early 2015 running 19A526h and it still lock up when running on power. No apps are ruuing either.

All, this fix extended the time befor eteh freeze but it still froze. Dont have a solution yet

Hello

I am also having the same problem.

The solution is to work without the power supply

Hello

I am also having the same problem.

The solution is to work without the power supply

Same happening to my Macbook (Early 2015).

yes. works when power supply is not connected. Also the macbook can not be connected to an extefnal display or the freezing reoccurs.