Finally Solved: A Dock That Wakes Up Reliably After Years of Frustration
For years, I battled the infuriating issue of my docked laptop failing to wake up, even with Thunderbolt 4's promised reliability. Despite trying the CalDigit TS3 and TS4, the problem persisted until I replaced my aging BenQ monitor with an ASUS ROG Swift. Since switching to the new display, my MacBook Pro and ThinkPad wake up flawlessly every time, solving a long-standing hardware headache without knowing exactly why.
At this point, I had pretty much given up and filed Thunderbolt's wake from sleep promise in the unreliable folder, right next to Bluetooth Pairing.
- bana-io
What I would have done is tested it with an Android phone. My Samsung S26 Ultra allows me to connect to an external display via a USB C hub. So the test setup would be:
1. Plug the phone into hub.
2. Check that you get display output, the mouse and keyboard are working whilst the screen is not turned off and the phone is not locked.
3. Lock the screen and wait for the screen to turn off, thereby mimicking suspend.
4. Try to make the phone resume by using the attached keyboard and/or mouse.
If all goes well, the monitor should turn on after unlocking the phone or using the keyboard / mouse.
# Other things to try
Again try and reproduce the issue with a Samsung tablet that supports display out via USB C.
Connect the keyboard via Bluetooth and try to make the laptop resume. I found that connecting a Keychron keyboard via bluetooth allowed me to resume a Macbook Pro. I was kinda surprised that this worked.
Does the same issue occur on Linux as well?
I guess you could attach a USB packet type of debugger to ensure that data is being sent to the laptop by attaching the debugger to the cable that connects to the host machine. If you see USB traffic when the monitor goes to sleep and you are pressing keys in the keyboard and the dock still has power that means the dock is working fine so you can rule that out.
- hankbond
Please take this gently, but I did not really walk away from this post having gained anything. I don't have any problems with the post in isolation but I just don't feel it really offers enough weight to be here if that makes sense.
I read a few of your other posts and your writing style is direct and pleasant in a way I appreciate. Thank you for actually writing things.
- torginus
These smart peripheral protocols suck balls.
The VGA->DVI->HDMI chain retained the following simplicity of: 1. Send color of pixel 2. At the end of the line + blank send a pulse on HSYNC pin 3. At the end of the screen send a signal on the VSYNC pic. That's it (almost, there's EDID). If you can implement this, chances are you can display what's sent down the cable accurately.
Likewise with audio, you just send a voltage level down the cable, if you want to be fancy, you use SPDIF, in which case you send a 16-24 bit number per channel.
That's it, no handshake, no negotiation.
I have a TB dock for my Macbook. Sometimes it doesn't register. Sometimes it reboots for some reason, giving me 10 seconds of black screen. There's a 10% chance on every connect or reboot that it will just plainly not work.
And it's way better than it used to be, but still pretty bad.
- jolux
My experience with non-Apple Thunderbolt products has been pretty dicey across the board. My ASUS motherboard has a port and theoretically works with it but across several firmware, BIOS, and driver upgrades, I’ve never actually got it to successfully recognize my TS4 as a Thunderbolt device, only USB.
- firecall
On a similar note, I still do not understand why I have to plug a USB Flash Drive into my Mac twice for it to mount.
I take modern USB-C Flash Drive, plug it into my Mac. Nothing. Take it out, plug it in again, and it mounts just fine.
Same with SD Cards.
I have no idea why this is, and I'm not sure if it's always been this way, but I can't remember a time when I didn't have to do this.