Macbook Pro M1 (2021) - Strobing Lights on Display after Extended Use

c-hill wrote:

Specs:

Macbook Pro M1 - 14" (2021)

16GB RAM

I purchased this laptop in Spring 2022, no issues until today.

I use it for fairly data-heavy coding -- so VSCode, terminal, 3 PDFs, Spotify, and 30 tabs in chrome is the normal daily use it sees.

Setup:

Same as above, 2 external monitors + native display.

I spent all morning and afternoon running python jupyter notebooks in VSCode and noticed VSCode was hanging a bit which happens if I have a lot of environments open for extended periods of time (I then usually close/reopen VSCode to cache dump which helps).

Issue:

While using chrome, several localized lights appeared and strobed a few times. Some of them then stayed on and some of them left a shadow where they were. Nudging the laptop in any way set them strobing again. I immediately took a 6 second video and then unplugged the external monitors. Nothing changed so I shutdown the laptop, closed the lid, ate lunch (25 minutes) and rebooted. Issue never came back.

The issue only occurred on the laptop's native display.

The video I took: (Excuse the quality, had to cut and compress it quite a bit to fit under 5mb to post here.)

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/776535db-4c22-4720-8025-09665a184bf9

Any ideas?

I still have one year of Apple Care left on it, but wanted to check here to see if this is a known or serious issue. Hoping it is just a random SMC-esque issue that was resolved with the reboot for now.

If it is a one off glitch I would ignore it.

If you think you have a hardware issue— by all means take it in and get a service record started for your issue.

In or out of warranty you can get a free over the counter 'Apple Service Diagnostics' test /assessment

Make an appointment for a "hardware issue"

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Outside the USA

Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support