For at least the last three versions of macOS desktop notifications will appear as transparent and un-clickable. If I restart notification center it fixes the issue but then the issue reappears. I have seen a few questions regarding this but no solution or idea what is causing it.
iMac 27", macOS 10.14
FWIW, It's never happened to me but I have seen it mentioned a couple times here. You could test it while logged into a different user account or while booted into Safe Mode.
Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support
FWIW, It's never happened to me but I have seen it mentioned a couple times here. You could test it while logged into a different user account or while booted into Safe Mode.
Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support
Thanks. I have tested it on the 4 pre-existing user accounts and when it's happening they all exhibit the same behavior which means it's a system level issue. I haven't tested it in Safe Mode yet. Will do that and report back, but of course this requires a restart and usually a restart will resolve this for a certain amount of time. I can't run my system in Safe Mode indefinitely waiting for this to recur.
I can't run my system in Safe Mode indefinitely waiting for this to recur.
You're welcome. It's understandable you can't run in Safe Mode forever. Does it happen with all notifications or only for a couple apps? I think it has to be something amiss on your Mac. I've been running Mojave since June 2018 on three Macs and two others since Sept 2018 and have never seen the problem.
If you have any antivirus apps or so called cleaning apps such as CleanMyMac you need to uninstall them.
It happens for all notifications. I am not running cleaning apps that work in the background. I do run Onyx once in a blue moon when I am having issues but that is to resolve problems, like this notification issue.
I just ran Onyx between our last email exchange and restarted and now the notifications are back to normal. This is generally what happens when I restart. Then after some time and many weeks of use the issue reappears. It's really difficult to troubleshoot this problem. It has started happening occasionally on my brand new 2019 iMac as well with a stock system installed.
You're correct. It is very difficult to troubleshoot. Especially since it only occurs after weeks of use. Personally I think it's being caused by something you're running. Especially since it's happening on two different Macs. But perhaps someone else wil have an idea. As I mentioned, I've never seen the problem on two iMacs, an iMac Pro, a MacBook Air and a MacBook since 2018.
For future reference.
If anyone who has this issue would like to compare to troubleshoot these are my startup applications.
Startup items folder is empty.
Login Items:
DiskWarriorStarter
ReiKey Helper
AppTrap
CCC User Agent
Dropbox
Launch Agents
com.bjango.istatmenus.agent
com.bjango.istatmenus.status
com.google.keystone.xpcservice
com.malwarebytes.mbam.frontend.agent
com.privateinternetaccess.osx.PIA-VPN
com.realvnc.vncserver.peruser
com.realvnc.vncserver.prelogin
LaunchDaemons:
com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing
com.bjango.istatmenus.daemon
com.bjango.istatmenus.fans
com.bjango.istatmenus.installerhelper
com.bombich.ccchelper
com.malwarebytes.mbam.rtprotection.daemon
com.malwarebytes.mbam.settings.daemon
com.objective-see.ransomwhere
com.objectiveSee.blockblock
com.peterborgapps.LingonX5Helper
com.peterborgapps.LingonX6Helper
com.privateinternetaccess.vpn.daemon
com.realvnc.vncserver
Un-clickable Desktop Notifications
