Hey there! Weird M1 iMac issue I've been encountering intermittently and unpredictably for months now. Once in a while — sometimes twice in one day, sometimes five weeks apart — the system will suddenly stop accepting keystrokes and mouse clicks.
But it's actually a bit more complicated than that.
When I say "it stops accepting keystrokes," well, the media key row still works just fine. I can adjust the volume, use Siri, or lock the system with the touch ID button — and in fact, if I do lock it, the password entry screen accepts keystrokes just fine. It's only once the system is unlocked again that anything from the number key row down stops working. Likewise, the mouse cursor continues to move freely, but clicks don't register, nor does anything that acknowledges hover state (i.e. can't reveal the Dock on the side of the screen, and mouse cursor doesn't change when pointing at the edge of a window).
This problem persists regardless of whether the devices are connected via Bluetooth or USB, and they always both happen simultaneously. Interestingly, if I turn the keyboard off using the physical power switch on the back, then if I rapidly press one of the keys while turning it back on, it'll sometimes be able to send exactly one keystroke that will get through before the system goes back to ignoring it.
The only way I've found to fix this is to reboot, either by using Siri to enable voice control and saying "click apple, click restart," etc., or by just doing a hard shutdown by holding the power button.
Any idea what might be going on here? This never happened to me even once on the late 2013 15" MacBook Pro I replaced with this computer, but maybe somehow some sort of settings cruft brought over through Migration Assistant might have done something? I have no idea!
But it's actually a bit more complicated than that.
When I say "it stops accepting keystrokes," well, the media key row still works just fine. I can adjust the volume, use Siri, or lock the system with the touch ID button — and in fact, if I do lock it, the password entry screen accepts keystrokes just fine. It's only once the system is unlocked again that anything from the number key row down stops working. Likewise, the mouse cursor continues to move freely, but clicks don't register, nor does anything that acknowledges hover state (i.e. can't reveal the Dock on the side of the screen, and mouse cursor doesn't change when pointing at the edge of a window).
This problem persists regardless of whether the devices are connected via Bluetooth or USB, and they always both happen simultaneously. Interestingly, if I turn the keyboard off using the physical power switch on the back, then if I rapidly press one of the keys while turning it back on, it'll sometimes be able to send exactly one keystroke that will get through before the system goes back to ignoring it.
The only way I've found to fix this is to reboot, either by using Siri to enable voice control and saying "click apple, click restart," etc., or by just doing a hard shutdown by holding the power button.
Any idea what might be going on here? This never happened to me even once on the late 2013 15" MacBook Pro I replaced with this computer, but maybe somehow some sort of settings cruft brought over through Migration Assistant might have done something? I have no idea!
