Mac Sequoia, Screen Flickering every few minutes

I have the same issue on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. It started after updating to macOS Sequoia 15.0. I uninstalled the Dell monitor app and Magnet app, but the screen is still flickering. Any advice, please?

I called support twice about this. I took the following steps, to no avail:

1) Deleted the duplicate color profiles for my LG monitor. Didn't fix it. It creates duplicates again.

2) Tried Safe Mode.

3) Tried to create a 2nd user/account on my macbook, it still does it on the second user.

4) Re-installed Sequoia (was hoping I'd get the option to downgrade, but no go). Still does it on a clean install.

5) I also wondered if it was connected to the new Sequoia motion backgrounds, so I turned those off. Didn't help.

6) Tried a different HDMI cable.

So now every single Zoom meeting I just lose my screens and my meeting blips several times. It's endlessly frustrating. I hope someone prioritizes this fix soon. It seems to me the macbook loses it's connection to the 2nd monitor, as my windows all momentarily move to the macbook as if I unplugged my monitor, but then instantly re-connects. So you get a blink, flash, and then another blink while it reconnects and then it's back to normal. But it's terribly disruptive.

Are you sure this is the same issue? In my experience, this is purely a cosmetic problem. The background is flickering; however, nothing is happening with open apps, including Finder, in any negative way.

Losing external monitors for a few seconds and experiencing screen blips during zoom meetings seems more like a hardware issue to me. Can you try using a different port on your MacBook (like USB-C or Thunderbolt), or test a different monitor using HDMI (even a TV)?

P.S. I have a feeling that a few days after the 15.0.1 upgrade, things improved significantly with the background flickering. It's interesting because I remember it flickering right after the upgrade, which left me a bit disappointed.

It's not a purely cosmetic issue. The flicker interrupts certain native processes. For instance, if I have Background Sounds playing, they stop and need to be relaunched whenever there's a flicker.

me too on a iMac Retina 5K, 27" (Intel), 2020 with macos 15.0.1 .

The screen briefly flickers green. This can even be reproduced in the Apple TV app.

This does not happen during movie playback. Only when a new screen is displayed or updated. I hope this information helps you to investigate the problem further. Thanks.

I've been having this all week as well. Like some others have mentioned, it's not just a cosmetic flickering, it's as if something is switching the focus of the app to something else. This frequently interrupts keystrokes when typing. And if you have any modal dialog, like a right-click, menu bar app, etc. those get dismissed as well.

What I've narrowed it down to on my end is some Python scripts that manage Docker containers. The script tries to access a file in `~/Library/Group Containers/...` to change some Docker settings, which requires permissions to other apps (or Full Disk Access). If I decline that access prompt, or disable FDA, the flickering stops, or at least becomes a lot less common, maybe once every few minutes (annoying, but usable). I've also tried to comment out the method call that does that file access, and it seems to also help, but unfortunately breaks some stuff with Docker, so I can't use that solution.

Hello all,

Here the same in France on Macbook Air M2, everything was working like charm probably seems Sequoia update... Wallpaper's flickering alternatively when it wants or not. Menu bar and dock are not... this CAN'T be a cable issue at all.

Trying to update to public 15.1b4, will keep you informed of resolution or not.

P.S.: that's good to see that I'm not the only one having this issue...

As promised, I updated in 15.1b4 not 15.01 and no more flickering since 1 hour. That probably means that it'll been solved in 15.1.

Check your hdd space remaining.

Check and clear the Photos app Recently Deleted, as well as Trash. Then restart. 🤞 GL

My M2 MacBook Air is on Sequoia 15.0.01 and this is happening to me as well. The flicker only happens to my desktop which flashes a solid dark grey wallpaper and then reverts back to my desktop image. I am also not running the Mendeley web importer extension.

I thought I was going crazy.

It happens in the background while I’m in an active window. I see the background flicker to a light grey. I only have a black background so it’s very distracting and concerning.

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.

Still getting the flickering screen. The screen flashes a black background for about half a second, about 3-4 times per minute. Details:

• This is on a Mac mini M1 2020 connected to a Samsung M8 smart monitor via Thunderbolt
• This is after having upgraded to mac OS 15.0.1
• It's happening with all wallpapers -- dynamic as well as static photos as well as just a color background. I can even see it if I switch to a black background because there's a moment of flicker before the screen goes black
• I do not have the Mendeley web importer installed

Let's get this fixed Apple.

Still happening on mine M1 air on 15.0.1.

me too, 15.0.1, MBP M2, can't believe this level of bug can still exist after so many beta tests...

flick 3-4 times every 2-3 minutes