Apple’s macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Supplemental Update Is Crashing MacBooks 

Apple on Wednesday (April 8) released MacOS Catalina 10.15.4 supplemental update for MacBook users. 

According to Apple, the macOS Catalina 10.15.4 supplemental update is designed to improve the “stability, reliability, and security of your Mac”, as well as introduce some specific fixes for the issues created by the 10.15.4 update in late March.

That earlier update had issues such as random reboots overnight, failures to wake up from sleep mode, unresponsive USB-C ports, kernel panic glitches and even system crashes when users attempt to make large file transfers. 

While the supplemental update was meant to resolve issues created by the 10.15.4 update, it is now causing even bigger problems.

“The 8 April 2020 Supplemental Update for Catalina 10.15.4 brought the system down for a few hours. Since the screen only showed a white apple on the screen for the whole time I shut it down and restarted it. I got a thick white circle with a thick white line through it in the middle of the screen, the same size as the apple usually is. Repeated shut downs did nothing,” wrote one user on Apple’s own discussion forum.  

“WARNING macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Supplemental Update BRICKED my 13-inch Macbook 2018!” posted another user on MacRumors’ forums.

“This bricked my 2019 MBP. Not providing power to devices either. Needs an SMC reset but won’t accept it,” posted a third. “Be afraid, be very afraid. Timing couldn’t be more brutal.”

One member on Apple Insider’s forum said the update wrecked their desktop PC, “Yeah, this one borked my 2012 iMac. Had to reinstall from recovery. Proceed with caution.”

My MacBook Pro 16” has been experiencing random restarts due to a kernel panic since I updated macOS to 10.15.4. Is anyone else having similar issues?! ? @AppleSupport

— russanov (@russanov) April 4, 2020

Anyone else seeing Finder hangs and crashes with 10.15.4?

— Stephen Hackett (@ismh) March 27, 2020

My MBP upgraded to 10.15.4 and has been crashing with kernel panic every time it goes sleep since then. Insane.

— Hitoshi Harada (@umitanuki) April 4, 2020

My 16-inch MacBook Pro has been crashing a lot since I updated to Catalina to 10.15.4 and its always when the laptop is in sleep mode. Anyone else facing this? pic.twitter.com/hDLu755Tjc

— Abbas Jaffar Ali (@ajaffarali) April 5, 2020

Fix For macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Supplemental Update problems:

As we can see above, the problems are currently faced by those Mac owners who have downloaded the supplemental update. In order to avoid such problems, it is advisable not to install the Supplemental Update for Catalina 10.15.4 until Apple issues a fix in the future patch. 

For those who have already installed the supplemental update and your system is stuck or hung, there is a workaround for these issues as posted by one user on Apple’s discussions forums. 

“I went to Recovery Mode, ran the Disk Utilities First Aid and then rebooted again,” tim01 posted. “My screen came up and I was able to sign in.”