Some 2021 MacBook Pro owners are reporting that their new machines are susceptible to kernel crashes when playing HDR video on YouTube. The problem appears to be happening inside Safari and third-party web browsers.
It’s not yet clear what the root cause is — or if it will be fixed with the upcoming macOS 12.1 update, which is currently in beta testing ahead of its release.
2021 MacBook doesn’t like HDR video
The 2021 MacBook Pro’s debut had been a little too smooth up until now. Unlike almost every other Apple product rolled out this year, it looked to be exhibiting no hardware glitches or major software bugs. Until now.
A thread on the MacRumors forum has become filled with complaints from new MacBook Pro owners who are running into complete system crashes when attempting to play HDR video on YouTube.
“It happened as I closed the HDR video (from YouTube) at the point I would have expected the display to switch back to SDR mode,” one user wrote. “It doesn’t happen every time – just the once.”
“Almost certain you had the same crash I did,” wrote another. “The screen went black and the computer restarted in my case. Then I had the ‘Your computer unexpected restarted’ popup after I logged in.”
“Been happening to me as well,” said another. “YouTube 4K HDR video on Safari. After closing full screen playback the Mac completely shuts down and reboots … I can pretty much get it to do it every single time.”
A complete mystery
Users have their own theories for what’s causing the crashes. Some speculate it has something to do with YouTube’s HDR video codec, while others say it likely stems from a buggy GPU driver. One believes it may be AirPods-related.
Whatever the case may be, it seems there’s no real fix for the problem right now. It seems to be occurring in Safari, Chrome, and other third-party web browsers — even after installing the latest macOS 12.0.1 update.
It’s not yet clear if macOS 12.1, which is currently in beta testing before it rolls out to all, will address this issue completely. Some testers say the update has fixed it for them, while other say they can still reproduce it under the beta.
