MacBook Pro 16 inch Flicker/Glitching Screen

Hello BloodshotEight0,

It sounds as though your display is flickering when watching videos in any application or website, but the issue doesn't occur when disabling Automatic Graphics Switching. You've tried some great troubleshooting steps thus far, and have done a wonderful job isolating the issue as well. Automatic graphics switching is designed to preserve the battery life when when using graphic intensives tasks such as watching videos in full screen. With the issue not happening when this setting is disabled, it's likely expected. To isolate the issue further though do you notice if it happens when the Mac is connected to a charger?

You can also find some great information about the graphics performance in the following articles.

Set graphics performance on MacBook Pro

Find out which graphics processor is in use on your MacBook Pro

Have a great day!

We completely understand your concern BloodshotEight0,

Graphic intensive tasks can include a variety of different graphics material including videos. With the issue you've described, and it occurring while Automatic graphics switching is enabled greatly helps isolate what you're experiencing. This feature is relatively new Mac, and when enabled does cause the Mac to favor battery life over quality of graphic intensive tasks. The next step that would be recommended would be to reach out to Apple. You can find their available contact information via the Get Support website.

Take care!

You can consider lowering your display resolution instead to see if that would provide you with a good battery balance (i.e. allowing to to keep automatic graphics switching on with the higher battery life, but without the screen flickering of higher resolution videos).

Hold down the "Option" get in the Displays System Preferences when you switch from Default, to Scaled, to see more specific resolution options.