Mac Sequoia, Screen Flickering every few minutes
Hello, I currently have a m1 macbook 2020, everything else on my mac is working except that my wallpaper keeps flickering every few minutes.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.0
Hello, I currently have a m1 macbook 2020, everything else on my mac is working except that my wallpaper keeps flickering every few minutes.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.0
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.
Mi flickering is definitively gone with 15.1 P*u*b*l*i*c B*e*t*a 2
Sorry for asterisks, Apple removes references to testing software in this forum.
I updated to 15.1 yesterday and till now the flicker is completely gone for me.
I updated to 15.1 yesterday and till now the flicker is completely gone for me, even my two external screens are working without any issues or flickering.
For testing purposes, please see if flicker problem is there w/o the external display, unplug USB-C. Thanks
The screen model or manufacturer (i`m using 2 monitors, both DELL) has nothing to do with it, since this has been working for 2 years now.
However, this was now resolved, but i have no clue what resolved it.
What i did was:
Completly shutdown the macbook, remove the USB-C docking station i`m using, remove all It's cables, connect a different USB-C Docking station, turn on with only 1 monitor (i have two), that was stable for 24 hours, so i replaced back to the original one i had (that was flicking before), and connected everything back again as if nothing changed. and now, it works fine.
seriously, i got no idea what actually fixed it. but this is very annoying, and did not happen on OS 14.
Check your hdd space remaining.
Check and clear the Photos app Recently Deleted, as well as Trash. Then restart. 🤞 GL
Solution -> 15.1 (official since two days) not 15.0.1
Appears to be some compatibility issue with the external display. What is its make and model? Maybe the manufacturer has some suggestions?
I upgraded to 15.1 three days ago and it fixed the problem initially, but then returned a few hours later?
Ugraded to 15.2 yesterday, and have not had an issue since - both main and secondary monitors exhibit no
dropping in and out at all - fingers crossed.
Found a temporal weird solution to this:
As soon as the flicker happens, I swipe the trackpad randomly very fast, idk somehow it prevents the next flicker.
Apple must take this issue ASAP, definitely software problem, it is super annoying and that a lot of users are experiencing this is just worse. Not to mention that if many users out there have changed the screen due to this issue.
I have the same machine with 15.1 and tried all except reinstalling my OS.
The problem seems to be with the external monitor compatibility so upgrading Mac OS probably won’t resolve the issue. Here is what others are reporting, unfortunately lots of different things to try: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/u405lh/m1_mac_dell_monitor_flickering_issue_fixed/?rdt=51447
What make and model is your external monitor, maybe the manufacturer has some suggestions?
MacBook Pro M1 (2020) with Sequoia 15.4.1 ... it's not just the screen flickering, it's the external display going dark for 5-10 seconds every few minutes. I have a 1TB drive with 575GB free, so free space is not the problem. I can't find any online instructions for creating larger blocks of contiguous free space; I think Disk Warrior did this years ago. I'm able to create periods of time with relative stability by deleting the display preferences (suggested in other posts) and changing the screen resolution. Things that have not helped at all: setting the desktop to black and running caffeine. One post says to restart into safe mode and reinstall Sequoia.
The issue seems to be gone in Sequoia next iterations. B*E*T*A versions. Works for me on Macbook Pro M1 (2020) 16GB RAM
Same here, updated to 15.1 this morning, and seems the screen flickering is gone, keep fingers crossed.
Upgraded to 15.1 yesterday (MBA M3) and now flickering is gone.
Mac Sequoia, Screen Flickering every few minutes