Problem connecting Projectors to Apple Silicon laptops using the HDMI port

The Mac does not rely on Windows-like side-loaded "Drivers" which are actually packages of resolutions and settings for a specific display. Instead, it goes straight to the immutable source -- it asks the display itself.

To get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display. "No signal detected" is generated by the DISPLAY, not by the Mac.

This query is only sent at certain times:

• at startup

• at wake from sleep — so momentarily sleeping and waking your Mac may work

• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go

• hold the Option key while you click on the (Detect Display) button that will appear in Displays preferences (from another display)

so try doing some of those things and see if the display comes alive.

Modern Displays with multiple ports are sometimes busy scanning the other ports, looking for an input, and miss the query from the Mac. They need to pay attention to the port you are actually using, or they will miss the query.

Some displays have On-Screen Display settings that can be used to tell the display a computer is attached on a certain port, or a certain port should be highest priority. Changing those may make your display more responsive.

thats a 1920 by 1080 (or lower) resolution projector

interfaces include HDMI and several analog formats.

HDMI cables you want for HDMI-only Displays (higher resolutions than 720p TV sets) are marked as Certified with an anti-counterfeiting tag and are labeled:

"PREMIUM High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "with Ethernet" (up to 4K at 30Hz) --OR--

“ULTRA High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "48G" (supports higher resolutions and backward-compatible)

Cables with No Certification tags are good for your standard 720p TV set, and not much more.

Cables "found" behind your TV set are unlikely to work on a modern Mac, because the standard has been raised quite high, such that NO transmit errors are tolerated.

“Got a 10k cable and got it working, thanks! (had to click on the superimposed rectangles icon on the tool bar to wake it up as well)“

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You are welcome!

👍Excellent job troubleshooting this!

"Problem connecting Projectors to Apple Silicon laptops using the HDMI port: This seems to be a common (older) problem, but I am trying to connect a Benq projector to the HDMI port on my M4 Macbook Pro (which always worked fine on my pre Apple Silicon macbooks) but the M4 doesn't see it as an available display. Is there a solution to this problem? I have a number of projectors that I can't use on the new Macbook, arrggh! I'm using Sequoia 15.6.1"

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Try a 4K Cable:

A 4K fixed it for me when connecting my M4 Mac to my Epson printer. Look into using the same.

what model Benq projector? there seem to be many different ones..