Black windows in Safari and Mail in Ventura OS

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 have had the same problem for months with my M2 MacBook Air. I see it at work and home when connected to an external monitor. It does not seem to happen when only using the built-in display.

It only seems to affect web-like content rendering, like in Safari and Mail, so I think it is a Safari WebKit + graphics related software issue. The actual web page seems to be still rendered and working behind the black mask, because the scrollbar works when scrolling, and sometimes selecting content or drag/drop makes it appear.

One workaround I've found is changing the external display refresh rate (e.g. from 60 Hz to 75 Hz) which seems to force a complete reset of the relevant graphics subsystem and pages will then appear again temporarily. But it will then break again after this.

Chrome is also unaffected, so that's another workaround for web browsing. But I miss my iCloud Keychain passwords there.

I've disabled all Safari extensions and that doesn't help. I've also tried different USB-C connections and HDMI adapters, and I get the same situation sporadically with all of them. I tried looking in Console for Safari- and display-related errors, but didn't see anything relevant.

Hopefully Apple gets to the bottom of the problem and fixes it in an OS update because it is very annoying, and there is no good workaround. I imagine it is affecting a lot of people at Apple too.

Can confirm: Not fixed in 13.4.

Another note: I do tend to keep a lot of Safari tabs and windows open, and this could be related. I was able to make it stop happening by closing all Safari windows, but that may just be correlation and not causation.

I have had the same problem (MacBook Pro 16, 2021, M1pro, 32gb) with the black windows. I just had an elaborate chat with a senior Apple Support employee who knew the problem.

She advised me to start in safe mode (startup with on/off button pushed) and then when you have the option to start with MacintoshHD click with L-shift pushed) and then after logging in, restart in normal mode. Apparently some changes occur then.

Until now (1 hour later) I still have no problems.

Will keep you informed it that changes for the worse.

I know that starting in Safe mode runs an fsck disk repair, and it probably deletes some system caches as well; possibly one of those things had an effect on the issue. Even so, it is unlikely to fix whatever underlying issue actually triggers the problem, so it is possible that the problem will return at some point.

Same problem here. I am using a MBP M1 Max with 64 GB of memory with Ventura 13.4. I have none of the suspects installed. What helps for me is to close Apple Mail and once Mail is closed the black windows in Safari magically disappear... I therefore suspect it is a problem with Apple Mail which has become a very buggy program overall...

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.

It's the same for me – tried Safari the first time since many weeks, after realising that Apple Mail stopped with the sporadic (sometimes often) black windows.

After hours in Safari without black windows the glitch seems to be solved, now.

Heureka!

You described it very same as me, at first I didn't find the problem is caused by Safari, It took me a long time to find this thread, I just cannot use words to describe my mood, I finally finally finally found someone who had the same problem as me.

You described it very same as me, at first I didn't find the problem is caused by Safari, It took me a long time to find this thread, I just cannot use words to describe my mood, I finally finally finally found someone who had the same problem as me. @orindad

Hi Alamode,

Have you already upgraded to 13.4.1.? That seemed to have solved the problem for me and for the last week, I am running Safari and Mail together, and no 'black windows' so far. Would be curious if others experience the same. Thanks.

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.

Indeed where are they? Just when I thought this MAJOR PROBLEM had disappeared - and while reading this forum again - Voilá: It showed up again! Very strange that nobody is addressing this issue in an effective manner.

This is happening on a MacBook Pro 16 M1 32Gb RAM 2Tb drive. Not so many Safari window open but many Mail windows instead.

Hey, bros, I am returning with good news, my MacBook without that problem for more than two weeks after reinstalling IDEA and resetting the external monitor. I don't know which solved this problem, but it really looks like returned to normal even haven't reinstalled the os system. I found the problem only arises when connected to the external monitor, so it might be some point that causes this problem, and my series of operations eliminated that point. hope these clues can help you guys.