Do I need to replace a screen assembly?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some advice or insights regarding a frustrating issue with my MacBook Air M2. I suspect it might be related to the T-CON board, lid angle sensor (ALS), or a loose display cable, but I wanted to share the full story and my troubleshooting steps along with a video clip showing the exact behavior.

Here is the timeline of what happened:

1. The Incident

Day 1 (Right before leaving): Before I even left for class, I was using my MacBook normally, watching YouTube. Suddenly, the mouse cursor froze and wouldn't move.

When I shook the mouse back and forth—using the macOS feature that temporarily enlarges the cursor so you can find it—the cursor did enlarge, showing the system wasn't totally dead. However, when I stopped shaking, the cursor stayed stuck in place and wouldn't respond. Interestingly, if I dragged the frozen cursor down to the Dock, the Dock icons still popped up and reacted as expected, even though the pointer itself wouldn't navigate normally.

Day 1: I brought my MacBook to class. It was packed inside a protective laptop bag, and I placed it under the seat of my motorcycle.

When I arrived at class, I opened the lid, but the screen was completely blank. Because the room was extremely bright, I couldn't see the keyboard backlight or any faint glow from the display, so I assumed the battery had run out.

Since I didn't bring my own charger, I tried using a friend’s iPad charging cable. However, the cable was too thin and didn't provide enough wattage, so it didn't charge.

2. Initial Troubleshooting

When I got back to my room and plugged it in properly, nothing happened to the built-in display.

However, the keyboard backlight turned on, and the trackpad responded normally (haptic feedback worked), meaning the system was actually running.

Later, I tried connecting it to an external monitor via USB-C/HDMI, and it worked normally. While using the external display, I updated macOS. Suddenly, during or after the update, the built-in laptop screen came back to life and worked normally again.

3. The Lid Angle & Sleep Issue

After that, I noticed a strange pattern: if I open the lid past roughly 90 degrees, the screen goes black.

As shown in the attached video, I have to lower the angle down to about 45 degrees for the display to turn on properly.

Crucially, I must not let the laptop go to sleep. If it goes to sleep, it reverts right back to the black-screen state.

When the screen finally wakes up or recovers, a Kernel Panic report pops up.

4. Apple Store Visit

I made a Genius Bar booking at the Apple Store. The technician told me that the display assembly might need to be completely replaced, costing around 26,000 THB.

Given the high cost, I decided not to repair it through Apple right away and took it back home.

5. Current State & Workarounds

For the first 2–3 days after coming back, it worked fine (as long as I managed the lid angle).

But now, as seen in the video, if I test putting it to sleep (e.g., pressing the Touch ID power button once, then pressing ESC), the screen shuts off with an abnormal flickering flash, and it gets stuck in that broken loop.

Right now, the built-in display is completely black again. My current workaround to revive it is purely a game of chance: I have to completely drain the battery (sometimes by using the MacBook's ports to charge an iPhone) until the battery dies completely, hoping it resets the SMC/display state upon reboot.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue with their M2 MacBook Air? Is this definitely a hardware failure with the physical display cable/T-CON/lid angle sensor, or could it be software-related? Any advice or workaround suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

(Please check the attached video to see the lid angle behavior and the flickering screen issue.)

Thank you so much!