Mac Book Pro 2019, Touch Bar started flickering and won't stop.

Yup, I went down the black tape route. I covered the entire bar except for brightness controls which don't seem to flicker as much.

The rest of the bar I do not need.

The device (2020, 1st gen M1) does still crash numerous times a day if not being used and when I shut down it restarts instead.

My faith in Apple products is much diminished.

[Edited by Moderator]

I got my 13'' Macbook pro with $2400+ in late 2019. And my computer touchbar started flashing in 2022 After investigation of this issue, it seems replacing the motherboard would be the only possible way and possibly the issue would still come back, however it would charge much more since the warranty already passed.

I was a big fan of Apple products (MBP, iPhone, iPad, Airpods, watch etc), however given Apple passive attitude of dealing with such massive issues on touchbar and my awful experience on this one, I almost pressed the "Place Order button" on getting a new MBP M3 and seriously held off my idea. Now I may start thinking about other non-Apple alternatives.

Maybe it doesn't happen to everyone. You are lucky. I was not and I am not the only one.

The flickering light is like a strong strobe light that lit up my whole room. I worry that this problem may cause a seizure in some poor person. Not everyone in a movie theatre has seizures, but they often put warnings before shows now to avoid litigation because someone had a seizure.

Apple should figure this out and provide a PERMANENT fix or warn people with seizure disorders before this happens.

No one should have to hold a flashlight on a $2000 new laptop for it to stop flickering. Come on Apple...

1. Turning off automatic brightness does not turn off the light sensor
2. Even if it did, there are some other scenarios, when touchbar dims, which is the cause of the problem for mem such as 60 seconds of inactivity.
3. When the touchbar is blacked out, this means that the OS lost connection to it as you even cannot start the settings, where you configure the control strip. In addition, if you kill the ControlStrip process when it is blacked out, it won't start back. A solution to this scenario I found is turning off the Mac, resetting the SMC by holding the power button for 10 seconds, and starting the Mac again.
4. I am currently using the script from https://medium.com/macoclock/macbook-touchbar-flicker-fix-bafa754aae13, so the only cases when I get the flickering issue is the sleep mode.

Maybe this will help you and help someone else to use this to find a better solution.

The same thing happened to my mom's laptop she tried to fix it but it did not work. usually, this happens when a heavy object is placed on your device for a long time or it could be a software bug. Hope this helps - Vivek

Yes, I put a black tape to cover the touchbar, and use a white marker pen to write "ESC, F1, F2.....etc" on the black tape.

My MacBook Pro will not crashes nor auto-reboot. If your's crashes, it is not caursed by flickering touchbar, most likely you need to re-format hard disk and reinstall Mac OS. Of course you will need to backup your data files first before re-format and re-install. I re-install mine two months ago and that solve the (another problem) of keyboard not responsive.

Looking good, M1 Macbook Pro in 2024.

I had to reinstall the OS last year after a total crash, it would not start up, bricked. I forgot to mention the flicker when talking to Apple technicians, I was more concerend with loss of data etc. One of them did mention I might be eligible for 'consumer rights'...

Anyway here's my hardware fix (tape job) for the flickering touch bar. The brightness controls don't suffer from the flicker too much so I left them uncovered.

Good job Apple.

Hello, same issue here but it comforts to know that I'm not the only one and that it's clearly not a hardware damage caused by me. I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro and my Touchbar started acting up roughly two year after I got it in 2019. Since then I have tried all of the common fixes: NVRAM reset, SMC reset, resetting the Touchbar process, deleting caches, and keeping my Mac up to date.

Still, the issue only seems to be getting worse as my room turns into a nightclub as soon as I haven't moved my cursor for a while or when waking up my Mac from standby.

Contacted Apple Support again today but they don't know of any more solutions besides those discussed here. And it seems as if they clearly know of this issue. I just don't understand why there hasn't been any recall program even though this is clearly a production issue on their side.

Anyhow, support staff recommended to send in feedback about the issue here. Apparently if lots of user report issues they will be forwarded to mgmt. Worth giving it a try.

Great news for everybody, I got free repair for my m1 macbook from Genuis Bar, my keyboard and battary got renew too

There are some things of concern in the posted report. For one thing, you have disabled system security, which is a risky move.

The report is a bit hard to read because a lot of extra  characters appear at the beginning of lines. To this day, I have seen this many times but have yet to ascertain why this happens only for some people posting their Etrecheck reports. Did you do Share Report->Copy and then pasted in the text box to post?

I sympathize. Having an expensive piece of gear fail on you is very unfortunate.

However, I do not agree with there being any grounds for a recall.

A minute percentage of people experienced failures, but the vast majority continue to use their macs with touch bar to this day - me included.

The touch bar never realized its full potential and was abandoned, but not because of hardware failure. I, for one, will be sad to see it go, and will miss it somewhat when I get my next 💻 (*)

(*) this symbol for a mac laptop above was entered by tapping it in my touch bar; I had written mac and it offered me an icon of an iMac or a laptop - try that without a touch bar 😊 - I did it again!)

Same problem, a 2020 M1 macbook costing $2000.

Could it be the light sensor/software is the problem?

Touchbar flickers like a strobe light since it was bought as seen here https://youtu.be/vAN8O4f2R3Y?si=0apE4ES1VtnH_ZFU.

The whole system crashed after 2 years had to reinstall the OS.

Will be reluctsnt to buy any new apple products.

I have had this same problem for about half a year, I can say from living with it that the problem only gets worse; flickering more often, and crashes are way more common.

it has gotten to a point now that my Mac, after waking it up, has to crash 4-10 times before it is able to stay on (with the flickering)