Black windows in Safari and Mail in Ventura OS

I upgraded to Ventura 13.4.1 last week and since then I have not experienced the 'black window issue' again. I hope it does not reappear.... Does anyone else have the same experience?

same problem here with black window content in Mail and Safari (also many windows and tabs open).

Sometimes re-opening the app fixes the problem, but it usually comes back quickly. A restart will fix it for a while.

Ventura 13.2.1 (also happened previously before updating OS version)

2023 16" M2 Max, 64GB RAM with 38 core GPU.

2 external LG 4k thunderbolt monitors.

I suspect this is a GPU related issue, probably affecting any apps using Webkit for rendering.

MacBook Pro M1 Max - 32GB - Ventura 13.3

Same issue. Tons of safari tabs leads to eventual black windows/garbled windows particularly if newly opened or reloaded windows. When it starts happening... mail often has a similar issue. Additionally, opening a photo in Photos tends to produce a quick flicker of the entire screen. In Safari I sometimes get strange page load error messages as well. I use Blender and that application will sometimes become unresponsive in dialog box tasks when I experience the issue with Safari. Quitting Safari usually resolves most things. Restarting definitely does for a period of time.

I believe I had these issues before upgrading to Ventura, but they definitely seem to happen a lot on this OS version. FWIW, my MacBook experienced the dreaded speaker crackles until they finally fixed it with a software update.

My best guess is that it has something to do with the memory swap. Safari just happens to be the biggest culprit with using up memory. (And possibly be the most vulnerable to memory issues.) Once my system gets to about 26-28gb of memory use, I notice that the system starts relying more on the Swap. My experience is still pretty anecdotal, but this feels like it correlates when the issues occur. I suspect the black windows and what not have to do with the OS trying to load a cache for the window in question and not being able to recover it properly/quickly. I'm not sure if this is a bug in the OS memory management or indicates a hardware (drive?) issue of some sort. I believe Safari tries to do some fancy memory juggling with its open tabs.

I'm concerned that ultimately the reason could be hardware related.

However, I've run apple's hardware diagnostic test and then the ram test and passed with flying colors. I just wiped my computer and did a reinstall with just a subset of apps I use regularly: Blender, 1Password, Google Drive, Adobe Creative Cloud. It took a day or two, but eventually I managed to get some Safari errors again.

FWIW, I have an appointment to bring my laptop in and run a few additional tests at the Apple Store this week. I'll try to report back if any issues are identified.

Michael

MacBook Pro M1 16" 2021, 64GB RAM.

Dual Monitor, many windows & apps open. Sometimes I can "motivate" Safari to redraw the window by changing the size of the window a few times. Within Mail, sometimes attachments show. It seems to be a problem with html parts of Mails, only. Most of the time it helps to open a mail in a new window, sometimes not.

Neither Chrome nor Firefox have the same problem.

Memory is never an issue (Activity monitor shows: no swap used, only a few GB compressed, very low memory usage). Maybe video memory issue?

I find a temporary solution when issues rise up quit any one application things will be better, but this does not always work when the issue happened the icons in system settings also missing, and then I use CleanMyMac to clean the cache and trash and then Mac will return to normal for a while without restarting.

I was recently successful getting rid of the black safari windows ( at least for the moment) by just closing and reopening mail ..and that also helped to see again what I type into the cells of a number spread sheet ..I am surprised nobody mentioned that unpleasant aspect yet: you do not see what you type in a cell of numbers until you press return

Onyx does not solve the problem permanently. Another temporary fix is to relaunch the Finder ( > Force Quit > select Finder > click Relaunch button): my black window pane instantly became normal again.

I am still having this problem with the most recent macOS Ventura updates, and it's frustrating to have to restart to fix it.

I discussed it with a friend that works at Apple, and he suggested reporting this issue via the Feedback Assistant. You can quickly open it by typing "applefeedback://" into Safari.

If you're also still having this problem, please report it so we can put it on their radar (pun intended). If you have them, I think reproduction videos and screenshots will help with demonstrating the severity of the problem.

I had a two calls with Apple support. I took the following actions: (1) I gave them a detailed report of the issues I have been encountering and also passed to them the link of this discussion thread; (2) I demonstrated them (via screen sharing) the issues at real-time. From their side, they asked me to run diagnostics to check the h/w and then suggested to install Sonora. If that doesn't fix the problems, then I will have a follow-up call. I am currently waiting for the opportunity to install the new OS.

Googling I found that the problem has been traced (maybe if this is true anyway) to Apple WKWebView (the following is a copy/paste from the website under this):

"As mentioned, the macOS has multiple system applications, like Safari, Notes, Mail, etc., that rely on the Apple WKWebView to render the HTML elements and support scripts.

If you’re simultaneously using these apps, WebKit is heavily utilized for rendering. And sometimes, it fails to render the pages, resulting in blank screens or distorted layouts."

https://browserhow.com/how-to-fix-the-black-screen-window-in-safari-browser/

Sounds like, presuming this is true, that the problem is at Apple's end and based on how long this has been going on either they haven't figure out how to easily fix it or don't care.

I certainly am sick of the issue.

In my case, upgrading to Sonoma fixed the problem. So far, at least.

I forgot to include my hardware & software setup:

I'm running on a M1 Max with 64GB ram. Like you I have a LOT of windows open in Safari. I would estimate ~75 windows, each with multiple tabs. I could easily have 300+ tabs open. I only have a handful (literally 5 at the moment) of windows open in Mail.

For me, it definitely seems to be safari that trips things up. If I reboot the computer and don't launch Safari, everything seems to run fine. Once I launch Safari, however, glitches start appearing in Safari and certain other applications.

This all worked fine in Monterey, but clearly something has changed in Ventura.

Like you, I've also found that rebooting can improve things for a while, but not always. Sometimes the problem recurs immediately after reboot. I did try reinstalling the OS. For a few hours it seemed like this might have helped, but then the issue reappeared.

You mentioned that you rarely use maps, but I'm curious if you've noticed impacts in other applications? Once this problem is triggered (seemingly by Safari) I've seen weird graphical anomalies in everything from the Finder to Microsoft Excel. I've resorted to a 2-computer setup: doing most of my work on the MacBook Pro, while using a MacBook Air for web browsing...

Somewhat amusing (while also being massively irritating). Safari had been working for a while when I first attempted to search for solutions to this issue, but this happened:

I just bought a new Macbook pro M2 max, 64GB and I have the same problem running Ventura 13.3.

(and i had the issue also with with a Macbok pro M1, 16 GB .

In both cases I am running one external display with lots of windows open. I switched to firefox now to avoid this messy safari behavior. Have seen the mail application problem mentioned earlier also and in numbers you would suddenly not see anymore what you type in the cells.

It is a part of a general mess working with many open windows per application .

Please note also that I still have remaining 16 GB of unused Ram memory, so there is no excuse for this behavior.

And if I would start talking about how MAC OS puts all the windows I have thoroughly distributed according subject to different desktops alltogether back into one desktop I really get frustrated. Not talk about the inability to give the desktops a name rather desktop1 ..desktop where one cannot remember where one had put the different windows according some criteria.

Christian

I have the same problem on a Mac Studio (Apple M1 Max) with 64GB RAM and Ventura 13.3.1. I let the computer running all the time, after several days, the problem of black windows in Mail and Safari crops up, an other application that shows the problem was Jump Desktop. I reduced the number of open tabs in Safari, but the problem persists. A restart remedies the problem, until it returns again.

I suspect the problem to be somewhere in the graphics card area. No idea how to solve the problem, except restarting the computer.

I've been hitting this for a while with MBP M1 Max with 64GB and it's frustrating that Safari windows randomly will go black but sometimes they can snap out of it. It doesn't feel like it was ever an issue with my Intel based laptops and definitely feels like an issue with the M series GPU because as others have posted, I see it happening with Maps as well. Eventually what ends up happening is a kernel panic and that results in the system restarting. I'd been hoping that an upgrade would fix it for a while but it doesn't seem to be happening.

I also have an excessive number of Safari windows and tabs which sounds like it might be a common theme here too.