White box on bottom of my screen

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Level 1

4 points

White box on bottom of my screen

Hello,

I have exactly the same issue than Carlpeng (Posted on Sep 6, 2018 8:31 PM).

A white box with a grey left side appeared at the bottom of my MacBook Air (1.7 GHz Intel Core i7 - Mojave 10.14.2 (18C54)).

It appears only when clicking on the desktop and disappears if switching to an app. It is resizable but I cannot close it. When ovre it, the pointer switches to text mode but I cannot type anything. I can paste text though with right click -> paste.

I can select the text and erase it.

Even I found it annoying, I have not tried to remove it until yesterday when it appeared on my iMac (3.2 GHz Intel Core i% - Mojave 10.14.6 (18G103)) as well!

As my 4 years old son is sometimes playing with my computers, I suspect an unusual keys combination.

Any help would be welcome and much appreciated!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 13, 2020 6:13 AM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

239,351 points

Dec 13, 2020 8:53 AM in response to LLLL4444

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Users & Groups, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

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Answer 2

LLLL4444 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 15, 2020 1:06 AM in response to BDAqua

Thank you for your quick and complete answer!

Well, I feel a bit ashamed to say that a simple reboot (not even in safe mode) solved the problem. But probably only temporarily as I rebooted my MacBook Air and iMac already (but rarely) and the problem reappeared. I tried to reproduce it, unsuccessfully until now. I will update this post if I succeed to reproduce it/it appears again.

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Answer 3

LLLL4444 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 29, 2020 9:45 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi,

It happened again when working only with Firefox (81.0) and LibreOffice (4.4.2.2), switching between both with copy-paste and switching input language between US and Japanese (which I perform using a created keyboard shortcut: Command-Space). I cannot say accurately during which operation it occurred but I suspect it has something to do with the language switch.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

239,351 points

Dec 15, 2020 4:18 AM in response to LLLL4444

OK, waiting to see if it happens again.

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White box on bottom of my screen

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