Mac Sequoia, Screen Flickering every few minutes

Thanks for the note. But mine, official 15.0.1, still definitely have the screen flickering issue (on a dark grey solid color background).

It's quite embarrassing. I see number of similar reports since June 2024. How is it possible that it hasn't been fixed?

I'm experiencing this issue on a Mac Mini M2 through HDMI, and I'm not using the Mendeley web importer. It started happening just after I upgraded system, with custom wallpaper, but it's also occurring with the default Sequoia wallpaper and even with a solid background.

I upgraded to 15.1 yesterday, I am still having the same issue. It is less frequent as 15 but its certainly still happening. Its driving me nuts.

Me, too. M2 MacBook Air.

By any chance do you have the Mendeley web importer extension? It's bugged on Sequoia and uninstalling it fixed the issue for me

Same here on Macbook Air M2 it happens both with and without external monitor Benq and Philips. .

Started after sequoia update, never had before.

No, I've also updated 15.0.1 this morning, but the screen flickering issue remains!

Hey,

I discovered the problem and found a rather brute solution to it.

I opened Activity Monitor and waited for the screen flickering to happen. That’s when I noticed that the WallpaperImageExtension process was causing the wallpaper to restart—it was failing to find a wallpaper in its cache. You can confirm this yourself by opening Console from the Applications folder. Set the filter to "Errors and Faults" and search for WallpaperImageExtension. Every time the flickering happens, you'll see an error log pop up in the filtered list:

Since it wasn’t possible to stop or disable this service alone (because it’s a child process of com.apple.wallpaper), I had to stop the entire wallpaper service. This means no wallpaper at all, unfortunately.

Here’s how to disable it:

1- Boot your Mac in Recovery Mode by shutting down and then pressing the power button until the options page appears.

2- Open Terminal from the Utilities menu bar.

3- Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) by running this command:

csrutil disable

4- Restart and boot normally, then open Terminal and run this command to unload the wallpaper service:

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.wallpaper.plist

This will stop the wallpaper from restarting until your next reboot or whenever you want to use a wallpaper again.

Note: It's generally not recommended to disable SIP, but if this bug is driving you crazy, it’s worth doing for some peace of mind. To re-enable SIP, just reboot into Recovery Mode and run:

csrutil enable

However, be aware that once SIP is re-enabled, the wallpaper service will start again, and you won’t be able to stop it without repeating the process.

Same or similar issue here.

I use a mac mini m1 8GB 256GB storage with the Utah Evening wallpaper/screensaver for work. It's an amazing computer.

I've noticed after installing Sonoma that I'm periodically seeing the screen (Apple Thunderbolt w/Apple Thunderbolt dongle) flash in the background to reveal a grey base wallpaper for a moment or two.It is like a flicker. It's annoying as prior to this latest OS update, this issue was not occurring.

Personally, I think it's the Dynamic wallpaper that's the culprit. If I switch to a regular image wallpaper, the issue does not persist. However I like the Utah evening wallpaper/screensaver combo, lol...so I'm stuck.

Perhaps a clean install...ugh...

Coincidentally, I had a MacBook Air M1 8GB memory & 256GB disk. When macOS Sonoma was installed on this previously fast performing machine, AND while using any of the Dynamic wallpapers...this too creates a grey screen issue that I only notice when fiirst logging in to the system. It is as if the system is choking for resources.

This simply shouldn't be happening. If the latest OS releases were fully optimized to work with our machines this thread wouldn't exist. Again, personally, I doubt this issue has anything to do with any other software other than Apples.

Sorry, Mine, MacMini Apple M1, is the same since updated to macOS Sequoia 15.0. last week. I tried to restart, not help.

Mine is a MBP M2 Max, I used solid color (dark grey) background and use external monitors (Dell) most of the time, the screen flickers every few minutes! Quite annoying.

Mine's doing similar where the display connected to a Mac Mini 2018 via HDMI keeps going blank at random times. It's as if the display loses the signal from the Mac Mini 2018 or is being sent a sleep signal. The display power is constant and the display then cycles through all its other inputs (which have nothing connected to them) before getting back to the Mac Mini 2018 HDMI input and discovering the signal again and showing the desktop.

I have this too. I've reported it today at Feedback - macOS - Apple

Not sure if anyone has discovered a fix or not?

Currently running a Mac Pro 2019 3.5GHz Intel Xeon with 96GB RAM, so I don't think it's resource issues!

Same here, on MBP (M2 Pro), especially when use safari.

Same here. Also happening in safe mode. Looks exactly like what happens if you type "killall Dock" into terminal.