Display Issue - Horizontal blue lines in application windows

I take that back. If it fixed anything, it was temporary. It's right back to the same problems.

joshintosh wrote:

For the record, I cleared NVRAM or "PRAM" several times in a row yesterday and left my computer on overnight. For the first time in a while there was no message about the computer restarting unexpectedly or any funky lines in my apps that have hardware acceleration in the morning. Seems to be working so far.

How to reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac -> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Glad to hear Apple's aware of the problem. I've been having the blue screen appear once every 2-3 days while using chrome. I don't use any intensive software—only VSCode and Chrome mostly and still get the blue screen.. sometimes the issue arises while only having browser on.

I have—"Enable Power Nap", "Prevent computer from sleeping"—all turned off by default, and have always been shutting off the computer when not in use and still have the blue screen problem. But also, the computer seems to be overheating quite frequently even without using any graphics or RAM intensive programs. I can literally see the dust marks in the shape of the fan vent on the bottom bezel of the display. Hopefully this helps the Apple team work on the problem somehow..

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)

Processor 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

Memory 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

External Display LG HDR 4K Display 27-inch

EDIT: Restarting the computer will temporarily fix the problem, but the same blue screen issue arises around—1 day to 2 days later.

This fixed it. It was set on the default.

OpenGL is being deprecated with Metal taking its place. Looking forward (Chrome Canary) there are reports this flag will be removed.

https://developer.apple.com/metal/

For me, it seems to trigger when waking from sleep, and if you have not already rebooted out of frustration, i have also found out that it can resolve itself from waking from sleep as well (though more rare).

For what it's worth, I have not had the issue occur for a while. I have a 3 monitor set up using a CalDigit docking station on my Macbook Pro 16in. 1 monitor is a 4k monitor, the other is a standard monitor and the 3rd is the macbook display. I am not positive if the events are related but when I am done for the day I have been keeping my macbook connected to the docking station and started closing my macbook to make it go to sleep. It's probably been a good month or so since I've had the blue line issue. I thought I would share. Thanks

FWIW, they replaced my mainboard requiring me to then rebuild my system from a backup, when I reported it to the local Genius bar, and the issue remained. That said (and I'm knocking on as much wood as I can find around me now) at some random time after that, it just stopped. I'm still using the same setup, settings, outboard adaptors and dongles, monitors, etc, and it hasn't happened in weeks. I don't know what's more frustrating, that it happened at all, or that I don't know what I did to make it go away...

Clearly, there's an issue with the GPU in the MacBook Pro 16" 2019 and software that uses the Chromium devkit that causes this to occur. Apple's acknowledged it in another forum post that I can't find now, but they said that they were talking to the Chromium team at Google about it, but something tells me that nothing is going to be done about it.

I find this a disappointing response from both Google and Apple. It might be worthy of a class action lawsuit? This might be the only way we can get compensation and recompense for the lack of action in remedying the problem...

Thoughts?

Thanks for providing the update, @ileradeltercomondo.

That is the worst of my fears – that potentially, this issue is inherently a hardware architecture and implementation fault that cannot be resolved in software without massively crippling the function of the GPU. I hope this can be proven otherwise from Apple. Something perhaps to do with how Apple integrated AMD's GPU core into this particular generation of Macbook Pros? It has been a nagging hunch that I've had for a while, especially seeing how we haven't gotten any fixes or updates from Apple.

It has officially been more than a year since this was reported. I am still abhorred at how I was led to think this was Google's fault in my initial Apple tech support outreach.

Those who continue to parrot resetting NVRAM or to disable hardware acceleration, keep drinking the Kool-aid. The rest of us here are looking for a resolution to getting our machines working – the way they were spec'ed and advertised to us – and that we depend on the stability of our machines to work when we expect them to.

My display continues to glitch. The easiest way to reproduce this is to leave the MBP plugged into a second display, let it go to sleep for a few hours while you have a web browser window (or any WebGL application) running, and wake it up. That said, I have also encountered the same glitch without a second display. The trigger point is almost always waking the computer from sleep – although these days just coding a WebGL app and testing it on browser refreshes can also trigger it.

Have there been sufficient fellow users who have submitted a tech support case to Apple, quoting this discussion?

To the Moderator: what did you edit in ileradeltercomondo's post? Some transparency will be useful here given the nature of this case.

Pretty certain that the problem being seen by the people in this forum thread is not a hardware fault per se, but a design flaw. An unforeseen incompatibility that now uncovered, is too hard to fix without designing a new combination of hardware and swapping out the computers with anyone that's bought one of these 2019 16" MacBook Pro models. Clearly, this would represent a PR disaster, a somewhat serious financial hit, and a lot of egg on a lot of faces.

This particular problem being discussed here has nothing to do with authorised service centre or Genius Bar staff. Nothing to do with support reps who are as blind to the real reason this is happening as the market is. Nothing to do with quality of manufacture.

A number of us who have seen this problem have had complete logic board replacements carried out by well-meaning, highly professional and ethical Genius Bar reps, only to find that the problem keeps happening.

Make no mistake. This is a minor scandal affecting a group of mostly unorganised consumers and one that a very large corporation with massive amounts of legal horsepower has already calculated the risks involved in ignoring the affected customers and decided that ignoring it is the most viable course of action.

Prove me wrong.

Same problem here, thread on macrumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sudden-graphics-corruption-16-macbook-pro.2230856/?post=28415221#post-28415221

I have different displays to you and am using the official Apple dongles, don’t replace them hoping it will fix the issue.

Also the issue occurs with or without external displays.

It happens on my brand new Macbook Pro 16".

MacOS Catalina Version 10.15.4

Brave: Version 1.9.72 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Also on Whatsapp desktop application

Has anyone tested if 10.15.5 fixes it?

I've done the hardware acceleration thing as mentioned below on Chrome and it works. Now I'm getting it in Microsoft Teams? Any ideas?

I do have a bit of news. macOS 11 Big Sur beta looks promising and does appear to resolve all the display issues.