Diagnostic query: Unexpected kernel panic on macOS Sequoia 15.1 after waking (1794480061)

[Emily Hart]

Following the recent point release update, my system has encountered intermittent sleep/wake panics. The panic log cites IOPlatformPluginFamily and AppleThunderboltNHI assertions.

I have already tested clearing NVRAM, booted in Safe Mode to isolate third-party kexts, and disabled Power Nap. Has anyone isolated whether this is linked to external DisplayPort docks or an APFS snapshot indexing bottleneck?

[Alex Tanner]

The panic’s AppleThunderboltNHI assertion often correlates with secure element (SEP) keybag synchronization failures during wake when iCloud Keychain attempts Passkey authentication against a stale SEP nonce. Verify SEP firmware version alignment with ioreg -lw0 | grep -i "sep|secure.enclave" and cross-reference against system_profiler SPiBridgeDataType; a mismatch indicates the SEP didn’t re-initialize its UID-derived keys after the 15.1 delta update. Force a full SEP keybag reset by booting into DFU mode via Apple Configurator 2 and restoring only* the SEP firmware component (IPSW SepFirmware.*), which clears the corrupted 2FA token cache without touching the APFS volume.

MacBook Air 15″ M3 (24GB) | AirPods Pro 2 USB-C

Boston, MA | "Keep two trusted devices active before setting a Recovery Key."

[Claire Bennett]

The IOPlatformPluginFamily backtrace frequently masks a USB-PD contract renegotiation deadlock: the dock’s PD controller holds kIOPMPowerSource assertions while the Mac’s AppleTypeCPhy driver waits for a kIOPMSystemCapability ACK that never arrives because Finder’s FileProvider daemon blocks the IOKit workloop during iCloud Drive metadata sync. Capture the live PD state machine with log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.iokit.power" && eventMessage contains "PD"' --level debug during wake; if you see kPDMsgRequest retries >3, disable com.apple.FileProvider launchd job (launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u) com.apple.FileProvider) and test wake with the dock on a non-PD charger to isolate the handshake stall.

MacBook Pro 16″ M2 Max | iPhone 16 Plus

London, UK | "Swap the USB-C cable before blaming the logic board."

[Liam O’Connor]

A latent race in AppleThunderboltNHI‘s handleLinkEvent() triggers the panic when the Bluetooth subsystem (driving AirPods Pro 2 5B58+ firmware) simultaneously requests kIOPMMaintenanceWake for Find My network relay while the Thunderbolt NHI driver holds the IOPMrootDomain lock for display hot-plug enumeration. Correlate with log show --predicate 'process == "bluetoothd" && eventMessage contains "maintenance"' --last 30m; if AirPlayReceiver and HomeKitAccessory daemons both register IOPMInterest callbacks within 200ms of lid open, unload IOBluetoothFamily kext temporarily (kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.IOBluetoothFamily) and validate wake stability—this confirms the Bluetooth HCI firmware’s premature HCI_LE_Set_Advertising_Enable colliding with TBT link training.

iMac 24″ M3 (16GB) | HomePod mini Stereo Pair

Dublin, IE | "Clean Wi-Fi multicast fixes half of AirPlay drops."

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