Black windows in Safari and Mail in Ventura OS

I don’t use an external monitor, or Idea. I still have the issue.

It does seem better since I quit Mail and only open it when I need, but I am not sure that is the solution.

The cleaning of caches idea is intriguing and I will look into it if my current solution is not effective.

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.

So frustrated, I am only happy last less than three weeks, and the problem is back again again again, why apple doesn't care about this? Even though I've updated the system the problem is still always inseparable

Another (temporary) solution that I found is as follows. For me, it happens mostly in Apple Mail, either when reading mail (in that case, I see a black content pane) or when writing mail (in that case, I see a white content pane). Whenever this happens, you can double click in the content pane, and with luck you will select some content, or you can try to hit Command-A to select all content. To my big surprise, all content is then visible again, though it still looks somewhat weird. After scrolling around a bit, everything jumps back to normal. No need to restart/relaunch anything.

Can anyone confirm that this also works for them?

@ws_tom_v I do something sort of similar when it happens in Safari and sometimes I can get the page to re-display by selecting all and a bit of scrolling.

That said since the 13.5 upgrade things have been a lot more stable for me with Safari and it hasn't recurred though it could just be that I've not managed to trip the bug yet.

Just some more info for the thread: I've been experiencing the black / partially black windows in Safari for a couple of weeks now, and just got my first crash as a result. (Weirdly, I was not asked to send a report to Apple upon restart.)

New 14" MacBook Pro, M2, 16 GB, Ventura 13.5--I've been using the machine for around five weeks. I recently updated to 13.5, but was experiencing the problem before the update as well.

FWIW, at the time of the crash, I had fewer than ten tabs open in Safari, and only a single Safari window. And I don't use Mail on this machine--so it seems lightweight Safari use alone is enough to produce the problem.

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.

A brief update on my experience with this issue:

I posted back in March, and at that time once the "black window bug" occurred, all of the windows in the impacted application would be rendered useless, and a reboot was the only (albeit temporary) solution.

This changed for me sometime in ~July. It seemed that after a system update (I don't recall which one, I am currently running 13.5), the bug became both less pervasive, and less permanent. I still have occasional black windows, but it seems to now only impact the active window, and it sometimes just resolves itself if I wait for a few moments. Other times I can refresh the window, and it will resolve.

It has been many weeks since I had to reboot to resolve the issue. The issue still seems to impact multiple applications (Safari, Mail & Maps mainly).

This is pure speculation, but it almost feels like one of the system updates added a background routine to check for this issue, and then resolve it automatically.

I'm curious if others have noticed an improvement in their own "black window bug" experience?

I was (am) experiencing this same issue on a 13" MacBook Air. I assumed it was a memory issue, so I purchased a maxxed out 15" MacBook Air (latest model) and started experiencing the same issue. I returned the 15" Air and bought a 16" Pro top spec, with 64GB RAM, and alas, I am still experiencing the issue. I am currently submitting this in Chrome because all my new Safari windows are black and I don't want to restart (again). I really can't believe how long this has been an unfixed issue... I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro (64GB) and it does not have this problem. I hope this isn't a hardware issue with the M1/M2 chips...

I think everyone who reported this is using M1/M2. It does not mean it’s a hardware issue. After all, the OS is compiled for Apple Silicon which is completely different from Intel.

Someone suggested it was an issue with caches, I think they are onto something.

As far as I can tell my MacBook Air is “cured” (for now) and I didn’t really do anything.

I spoke too soon. It's almost as if my laptop is toying with me. Shortly after my prior post in which I mentioned an improvement in my "black window bug" experience, the issue cropped up at a scale that required me to reboot, and I've rebooted at least a dozen times in the days since. It seems that for me, the issue may not actually be improved after all.

I don't need to reboot. I suffices to relaunch the Finder: Apple menu > Force Quit > Finder > Relaunch.

But even under Ventura 13.5.1, the bug is still present, though it seems to have evolved a bit. Moreover, it also crops up in various Microsoft Office apps (Outlook, Excel).

same exact here as others have described and for A LONG TIME NOW! it amazes me that I have $24k+ worth of Apple products sitting on my desk (MPB 14" M1 Max 64GB 8TB + 3x XDR Pro displays) and I can't hardly browse via Safari or read mail via the Mail.app --> seriously? the two most basic things? web and email unusable? come on Apple - Steve has to be turning in his grave reading this... sad. for the first time in my life (my first apple was Apple ][e back in the 80s!), Im considering moving to Windows - my GF's PC runs circles around this MPB, for half the cost and no issues such as this. come on Apple, get with the program! its basic WEB and EMAIL !!! make it work... so frustrated, I want to throw this thing out the window.

So frustrating...

For what it's worth, I had two Macs next to each other, one had the issue the other didn't.

Then one day it miraculously disappeared. I really can't explain.

Did you use the suggestions above of quitting Mail or relaunching Finder?