Mac Os Catalina - Photos flickering when scrolling

Hello ranoano,

If I'm understanding you right, you're seeing flickering when scrolling through your photos in the Photos app on your Mac. Also, this only started happening after updating to macOS Catalina. This doesn't sound like something that is expected to happen after updating your macOS version, so I can understand why you would reach out for assistance. I'm happy to help you.

There are various possibilities as to why this may be happening. Try out the following steps to troubleshoot the issue and narrow things down further. Test out Photos after each step:

1. Quit Photos and reopen it: Quit apps on Mac.
2. Disconnect any devices connected to your Mac other than the power cable.
3. Restart your Mac.
4. Reset the NVRAM: Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac.
5. Test Photos while booted into safe mode: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac. Test Photos once more after restarting your Mac and logging into your normal user account.
6. Test out photos while logged into a brand-new user account: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. For this step, you will have to add some photos to the Photos app.

If the issue persists, respond back letting me know if you experienced it while booted in a new user account.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care!

Hi! Yes..there is no solution update from Apple yet. But a temp solution is to change the Profile Color of your screen.

system settings>screens>color>(change “lcd color” to another profile and test it. RGB GENERIC or P3 worked for me. P3 better.

please post if this worked for you afterwards. Cheers

Same issue

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)

Mac OS 10.15.3 (19D76)

Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB

POTENTIAL FIX:

Changing colour profile worked for me and I have not yet seen any adverse affects.

System Preference -> Displays -> Color (tab) -> Uncheck "Show profiles for this display only" -> Select "Display P3"

Basir wrote:

Same issue

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)

Mac OS 10.15.3 (19D76)

Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB

POTENTIAL FIX:

Changing colour profile worked for me and I have not yet seen any adverse affects.

System Preference -> Displays -> Color (tab) -> Uncheck "Show profiles for this display only" -> Select "Display P3"

was having the same issue as the pictures posted on first page of these replies, and this resolved the issue for me.

Just for everyone’s information:

MPB 13” 2020 10.15.5

Changing to Generic RGB didn’t work.

Changing to P3 did work.

Turning on metadata also works.

So currently: LCD colour profile with metadata turned on solves problem.

Open Activity Monitor and see if anything is using high amounts of CPU. There have been some issues of runaway tasks using large amounts of CPU under Catalina. Sometimes, this is due to apps that aren't compatible with Catalina yet. High CPU usage can cause what you are seeing.

https://bradleyaross.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/macos-catalina-overview-of-problems/ is my current summary of what I have heard.

I'm looking at the problem, and I have some questions. I must also say that taking a movie of the screen with an iPhone sounds very useful. Capturing the screen as a movie may not work because of timing issues.

Consider this as three phases: before scroll, during scroll, and after scroll.

1. Before the scroll, do the thumbnails appear normal?
2. While you are scrolling, do the images with the checkerboard distortion (alternating squares having a solid color) move with the window. The alternative is that thumbnails would switch between normal and checkerboard distortion as scrolling occurs.
3. After scrolling, does the checkerboard distortion remain on the images. If you scroll slowly up and down, do the thumbnails remain unchanged.

Are you using the NVIDIA GeForce card or the Intel Iris Pro set. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202053 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201851 . Control of the GPU (graphic processing unit) is at the top of the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences. The NVIDIA card is much faster but may require that the laptop be connected to a power adapter. Make sure that you are using NVIDIA.

My thought is that the GPU is not fast enough to render the thumbnail while scrolling the screen. I have seen the "checkerboard" effect when an image is not correctly rendered. If the thumbnail does not return to correct scrolling when scrolling stops, it may be that the system does not realize that the thumbnail has been incorrectly rendered. In this case, does the image appear normal if you open it in Preview. If you save the file in the same location, will the thumbnail appear normal when you exit Preview?

hi, all

I have exactly the same issue and tried so many way. After all, I changed the Color profile from Color LCD to Apple RGB and the flicker disappear.

I am using MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019)

macOS Catalina, Version 10.15.4

I am not sure this will solve the issue for everyone or not.

Good luck.

I was able to find a workaround for this problem until it is properly patched. Add titles to your displayed metadata via View>Metadata>Titles or press Shift+Command+T. Filenames will show under the images but no longer any checkerboard glitching while scrolling.

I have flickering photos only in shared albums with middle and small size of the photos. 10.15.6 update didn't solve the problem, instead of this Apple brought more levels of photo size and if set photos to the any size larger then middle, the photos will stop flickering.

As for me this is strange decision for this problem.

I have this same issue, it was happening on most images when scrolling up or down- brand new MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) Catalina 10.15.5

Display P3 has seemed to work for me, RGB did not.

Thanks for the help

I can confirm I had the same issue as demonstrated in the pictures.

Resolved- I restarted my computer, followed by open the Photos application holding down the "Option and Command keys", this prompted the application to rebuild the library and thumbnail cache. Since then is seems to be working.

Hope that helps.

try changing the Screen Profile under System Settings

Same here, but here's the weird things: on my wife's MacBook Air (2018) there's NO flickering (and it's on the same Catalina version).

I'm on MacbookPro 2017.

I also noticed that if you enlarge to the max the photo view the flickering disappear.

It's annoying.

Any news?

Hi Matthew.S81, ranoano, AdelaS, stoomc, APKH, richardfromsan ramon, Jaroslaw_R, michelfromaesch, mrae_, michelfromaesch

I just spoke to Apple. I have a case pending with them. The latest update is that Apple is aware of this issue and they do not have an update on this one yet.

I think they may probably fix it in the next MacOs update.

Cheers