Macbook Air M1Source: Daniel Bader / Android Central

What you need to know

  • Some M1 MacBook Air owners are experiencing random reboots.
  • The issue seems to be a bug contained in macOS Big Sur 11.1.

Apple released macOS Big Sur 11.1 to the public earlier this week which included support for the company's new AirPods Max headphones, a new Apple TV+ tab in the TV app, new widgets for Apple News, and the privacy labels for apps on the Mac App Store. It also included a number of bug fixes.

Unfortunately, it appears that macOS Big Sur 11.1 has also added one pesky bug for a number of Mac users. Reported by iPhone in Canada, a number of M1 MacBook Air owners are experiencing random reboots when using their new Apple Silicon Mac. The outlet has found that the reboots seem to occur most often when the Mac is being hooked up to an external display or hub.

Macbook Air M1Source: Daniel Bader / Android Central

Users on Reddit have been reporting the issue since the macOS 11.1 beta was released:

"Brand new MacBook Air here, had it since last Tuesday and immediately updated to 11.1 [beta]. Over the course of the day I'm experiencing lockups and reboots which is not exactly making me love this machine at times. I could restore back to 11.0.1 but I was wondering if anybody running 11.1 [beta] on M1 was experiencing the same reboots first," said user 'thereantg'.

The issue has also been reported a number of times in the MacRumors forums:

"I've hit this issue a few times with my M1 [MacBook Air] on the latest Big Sur where randomly the screensaver will turn on. Then, tapping the touch ID will just toggle between the screensaver and the login screen, but the touch ID will ever unlock the computer. Even if I type my password, it will just go from the login back to the screensaver. The only fix is to close the screen and reopen it and then it will work. Has anyone seen this? I haven't run into this issue on my 2017 [MacBook Pro] with the same Big Sur version," explained 'bobbba'.

It appears that the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro and M1 Mac mini are experiencing the issue as well as a handful of non-Apple Silicon Macs, but none seem to be affected by the problem more than the M1 MacBook Air. At this time, there has been no solution as to why the issue is occurring. Hopefully, Apple will address it and provide a fix in the near future.