M1Max / macOS 12.2 issues

Category: Troubleshooting

Last updated: March 28th, 2022

In rare situations, a macOS update can bring unintended behavior with it.

Jan/Feb 2022: Issues on M1 Max systems after updating to macOS 12.2.x

Update (2022-03-24)

Matching reports from many users: Display issues are gone after updating to macOS 12.3

Given this positive feedback, we are optimistic that macOS 12.3 has a fix for this bug included. If you are running macOS 12.2 and experiencing the issues described below, you might consider updating.

Keep in mind that other software applications might still not work on the latest macOS version (known issue: some cloud storage applications). So if you have already downgraded to macOS 12.1 (see the guidance at the end of this article), we recommend waiting until your current project is finished.

Some of our Silverstack and Livegrade users report severe issues after updating their systems to macOS 12.2 or 12.2.1.

Silverstack users report:

  • No video playback possible
  • Empty thumbnails for some formats (all white)
  • Empty transcodes for some formats (all black)

Livegrade users report:

  • Video output not possible anymore
  • Video playback not possible anymore
  • Thumbnails empty (white)

From evaluating our user’s reports and our own investigations, we currently have these assumptions:

  • Issues only occur on M1 Max systems (no report from Intel, M1, or M1 Pro users)
  • Issues occur after upgrading to macOS 12.2 or 12.2.1 (no report from users w/ 10.x, 11.x, 12.0.x , 12.1.x)
  • Issues disappear after downgrading to macOS 12.1
  • Issues only occur on systems with 64 GB memory (no reports from users w/ different configuration, we are not able to reproduce the issue on M1 Max 32GB in our lab
  • Issues originate from a bug in a system component of macOS 12.2 (we’ve informed Apple)

If you made further or differing observations, please inform us at contact@pomfort.com or https://pomfort.com/contact/.

We strongly recommend not updating at this point to macOS 12.2 if you are running a system with an M1 Max chipset.

We will post all new information about this topic on this site and will inform you once there is a fix available via our social media feeds on Twitter and Facebook.

Workaround: Installing macOS 12.1 as a second system on your machine

If you are already experiencing the issues on macOS 12.2, the only workaround we can suggest at this point is to install macOS 12.1 as a second system on your machine.

  1. Download the 12.1 installer by using the following command from the terminal: softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 12.1
  2. Open the Disk Utility.app from /Applications/Utilities and add a second Volume (e.g. named 12.1) to the existing system container (see screenshot)
  3. Start the downloaded 12.1 macOS installer by choosing Install macOS Monterey from /Applications and choose the second Volume created in step 2.
  4. After the installation, disable automatic system updates from the Software Update system preferences to prevent macOS updating itself to 12.2.1 again.
  5. From the Startup Disk system preferences, you can choose which system to boot.

Add a second Volume to the existing system container

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