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

Try starting in Safe Mode. Does the flicker also occur in Safe Mode? If it does, then I'd suggest it is probably a hardware issue, and you should take your mac in to service.

If the issue does not occur in Safe Mode, but reappears when you restart normally, then it may be caused by some sort of software conflict.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

I have some improvement after turning off Touch Bar zoom.

Saw this on here

"Sonoma upgrade turned the Touch Bar zoom on, which impacts ability to interact with it. To turn it off (or see if it's turned on) go to Settings > Accessibility > Zoom > Touch Bar zoom "

The flicker stops when I touch the touch bar...

People are reporting a touch bar flicker after upgrading to Sonoma.

I have a MPB 13" Touch Bar and have the same issue.

I tried the torch light on the light sensor and it did stop flickering, so this might be to lower the intensity of the light going through the Touch Bar. Thanks to the one stating that it is indeed avoidable by removing the adjusting to the ambient light in Settings. Hope that Apple will do a recall and be kind enough as this is a real issue and these machines ain't cheap

The fact that I am not alone is no longer comforting me since it has been two years I have been having this issue, and no fix except for logic board change has been found.

The only half-fix to stop the nightclub issue is to run a script which will be killing touchbarserver every minute, preventing touchbar from dimming after inactivity. You can find that script in this thread, it is published on medium.com.

Hello! So I found a very interesting workaround for this super annoying issue. Until now I had been working with this computer in clamshell mode with a monitor, in part because I couldn't stand the flashing anymore. However, I need this one as a travel laptop and so out of frustration I put a piece of black electrical tape across the Touch Bar, leaving the Touch ID button exposed. Lo and behold I opened my laptop this morning and no flashing (you could still see a tiny bit of it yesterday) and it didn't crash after I closed the laptop -- like it does EVERY TIME. I hope this weird workaround works for you. I programmed the "fn" button as my new Escape key and I use the uppermost bar at the top for sound, display, etc.

My observations at work is that when the Touchbar does this, the Mac requires hardware repair.

As I said before, I understand how frustrating it is. I think it’s a hardware, as BobHarris said. And despite how people affected may feel, it is not one that is widespread. The only course of action that I can recommend is to take your mac in to service.

Found this on reddit and couldn't believe it. Absolutely software issue.

Get a phone on max brightness or a flashlight. Then, shine it at yourlaptop camera/lightsensor. The touch bar will get brighter and stop flickering within 5 seconds. The, pull the light away. The touchbar dims and starts flickering.

This makes so much sense. I am using the fix from the medium, where you run a script which restarts the touchbar process after 59 seconds of inactivity, because after 60 seconds of inactivity, the touchbar dims and this is what causes it to flicker. I could not figure out why my mac was crashing in sleep mode with the lid closed. But now it makes sense, as it probably triggers the light sensor trying to dim the touchbar, which leads to flickering. Now I wonder if there is a way to overwrite the touchbar instructions to dim or override the light sensor to fix the issue.

However, I am still not sure if the problem is purely software. After each crash, my touchbar is usually gone and it takes a few minutes before the next kernel panic and crash, after which I reset the SMC key by holding the power button for 10 seconds, and the issue is always fixed until next sleep mode and kernel panic.

zhoufeng16 wrote:

I have been and currently am using ventura, got the flickering issue for more than half a year since then.

The experience for company Macs with a Touch Bar has been that it needs a motherboard repair.

I have re-done my black tape over touchbar work by using lettering stickers.

First cover the whole touchbar with black tape, then use a snap-off blade knife to trim off the extra tape so that the tape cover exactly the touchbar area.

Then by using the “lettering stickers” (purchased from a China seller), putting the letters (ESC F1 F2 ……etc) one by one onto the black tape on the correct locations. As shown in the picture below.

1. I turned off the light sensor after reading this post (Turn off Automatically adjust Brightness in display: Click on the main Apple menu and choose System Settings.
2. Select Displays.
3. Turn off Automatically adjust Brightness.
4. Quit System Settings.
5. )

the flickering stopped. Restarted, some flicker during start up then fine, no flicker, touchbar worked normally.

Started up today and the flicker was back. Currently not flickering but touchbar is blacked out, so, useless.

Apple? are you there?

My MacBook Pro 2019 has this flickering Touch Bar since 2020.

I find that some time the touchbar will goes totally black without any light,

so this is better than flashing with bright light.

(I cover the camera with thick black tape maybe that is the reason).

But once I close the lid put it in my travelling bag, reached office and open the lid the flickering come back.

Next I am thinking to cut a black tape into an equal size (with the touchbar),

and put the black tape on the touchbar,

This black tape is the one electrician use as an insulator to cover the exposed wire.

The good news is even with a black tape on the touchbar, the touch sensor still able to sense my touching.

Then next I need to do is to write labels ESC, F1, F2 ...etc

by using a white marker pen onto the black tape on the correct location.

That is all I need, I don't need other keys like sound control, screen brightness control,

I can do the setting to have these control on the screen's top right menu.

And the [fast forward], [fast rewind], [Play/Pause] keys are just redundant.

Also my touch bar stops flickering when I connect it to the power charger

This happened with a 2020 Macbook Pro of mine. I took it to Apple and the tech reset all kinds of things, SMC, NVRAM, thought my battery needed to be replaced and seemed surprised it was in great shape.He did things for an hour and then told me I need to have the whole thing bottom of my Macbook replace for $1000. I was livid! I just bought this a few years ago! I couldn't afford the "repair", so they told me to buy a back up...and a back up for the back up. Sure enough, my macbook died soon after. The flickering touch bar makes the 2020 macbook a LEMON and Apple needs to recall it. I noticed they are not including it going foreward. We should be reimbursed. Apple products are not cheap and in this financial day and age, I already have friends who are choosing other less expensive products from other companies because of my experience. Shame on you Apple for not recalling this obvious failure.