USB problem/Thunderbolt on Mac mini M4

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. It has to be the adapters. I bought a whole bunch of them off Amazon. I should've been more discriminating. I will remedy that now.

No thank you to MacWorld, Rumors, Reddit etc Apple trolls publishing junk. Have fun nevertheless! Grabbing popcorn…

I definitely plan to return mine within the warranty period. Hopefully, they've fixed the problem in later production runs, as it would require swapping in a new motherboard.

Lose the extra cabling and adapters at the mouse and keyboard port. The USB keyboard and mouse don't require anything but a simple USB-A to USB-C adapter to connect to the ports on the back of the Mac mini. They are simple and affordable @ about $10 a pair on Amazon.

They look like this:

In fact, if your keyboard has USB pass-through you only need a single connection to the Mac mini. You can daisy chain your mouse through the keyboard. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here.

I have a related problem. I just migrated to the Mini M4 from a 2015 iMac, and my backup protocol involves old HDD/SSD disk enclosures with USB connectors.

These work fine when plugged into the front USB-C ports (with adapters where required).

The same disks fail to mount when plugged into the rear T-4 ports.

Am I doing something wrong, or just not understanding the interoperability?

All of the USB-C ports on a M4 Mac Mini or M4 Pro Mac mini - front or back - should support USB 3 devices.

The rear-panel USB-C ports are the only ones that also support USB4, DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt. So normally the issue would be that you tried to plug something into a front-panel port that needs a protocol only available in the back. (Like a display or display adapter; or a hub that has both HDMI and USB-A ports.)

If USB-C to USB-A adapters work

in the front, but not in the back, I’d suspect that some piece of equipment was not standards-conformant. I couldn’t say whether that would be the TB4 ports or the adapters, but if they are third-party adapters, you might want to try a different brand. I’m guessing that Apple tests interoperability a bit more than third-party adapter vendors might.

Thanks, Servant of Cats.

Alas, I have just one Thunderbolt-compatible peripheral – the case for my external SSD (which does the heavy lifting alongside the 256GB internal). Also, my problem is the reverse of what you have mentioned. The drives are working fine in the front (USB-only) panel ports, but not in the rear (USB++) ports.

Hi,

I have kind of the same problem. My external ssd mounted at the back of my Mac mini M4 works fine. All other ports do nothing. I received the mini from apple on Monday. I'm a bit stuck now.

The cables and such that I use all worked fine on my old iMac.

Same.

Using a short USC-C male to female cable as a passkey saver will not allow the hardware to work when plugged into the rear port (it is fine going directly in).

When I plug the same setup into the front, I have no issues. I don't really like burning the front port and I don't like putting these hardware units directly in as they've been damaged very easily I'm the past.

Hoping the Satechi M4 mini hub won't experience these issues once released - I'm sure they're currently doing the testing as the release is coming soon

I have the exact same issue on both my M4 Mac Minis. I am using an older wired Apple-branded Mac keyboard (with the numeric keypad), and a USB-C to USB-A dongle or cable always works in the front ports but not on the back ports.

I don't think it's the dongle; I think it's the keyboard. I connected a Logitech mouse using the same dongle to a port on the back, and it works 100% of the time...

Hmmm....

I can't wait for the Satechi M4 mini hub too!!!

When I have my wired Mac keyboard connected to the back and power up the Mac Mini, it doesn't work if it's connected to one of the back ports, but it worked perfectly fine in the front ports.

I never use sleep on my machines; it seems we are all having the same issue, but there may be a few causes. As some posted here, I hope it can be resolved with software as using the front ports is inconvenient.

I am experiencing issues with all the rear ports. I plugged a monitor in from the back but when I plugged in another peripheral the monitor connect became glitchy. Same thing occurred when monitor was connected thru HDMI. Plug in another C , then the HDMI connection glitched.

I saw an article on this:

https://apple.news/AaP7mE6IIRzie2zdDxFUdtw

This looks like an issue with both the quality of the cable and also length (because of Thunderbolt which is more sensitive to cable lengths than USB).

How long are the cables in the back? Have you tried 3 feet or shorter (1m or less)? Use Apple cables if possible.