Mac Sequoia, Screen Flickering every few minutes

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.

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

I had same problem since updating to Sequoia yesterday. I called apple support. What seems to have fixed the problem (at least for now):

Start up your computer in Safe Mode. If you do not have the flickering while in Safe Mode, it is a software problem. That is what they told me. If that is the case the next step is to reinstall Sequoia. See the link with the steps for starting up in Safe Mode and for reinstalling Sequoia. They told me I had to do the safe mode thing FIRST. The first time I called, the person asked me to re-install, but did not ask me to start up in safe mode. That did not work. I called again and the other person told me I had to start in safe mode first, and then reinstall. It has been about two hours that I have done these two steps and so far no flickering or flashing or sliding the screen from right to left.

1) Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

2)Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

I had same problem since updating to Sequoia yesterday. I called apple support. What seems to have fixed the problem (at least for now):

Start up your computer in Safe Mode. If you do not have the flickering while in Safe Mode, it is a software problem. That is what they told me. If that is the case the next step is to reinstall Sequoia. See the link with the steps for starting up in Safe Mode and for reinstalling Sequoia. They told me I had to do the safe mode thing FIRST. The first time I called, the person asked me to re-install, but did not ask me to start up in safe mode. That did not work. I called again and the other person told me I had to start in safe mode first, and then reinstall. It has been about two hours that I have done these two steps and so far no flickering or flashing or sliding the screen from right to left.

1) Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

2)Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

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.

I was having this issue and tried some of the other solutions that have been mentioned.

2023 MacBook Pro M3

In the end, the problem fixed itself when I cleaned up my hard drive. I was down to around 5 gigs free on my hard drive, and once I cleared up 150 gigs, the problem disappeared.

I have had other weird issues on a Mac when the disk space was low.

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.

Developer Update 15.1 for Sequoia appears to have fixed this issue

Reporting in that upgrading to 15.1 solved the flickering issue on my mac Mini (2020, M1 chip).

I suddenly started experiencing this issue on my MacBook Pro M2 yesterday (20th Nov 2024). The only thing I can link it to was installing Mos (a third-party mouse smooth-scrolling app) after my trusty Magic Mouse 1 died. I was on version 15.0.1, and when I saw the update to 15.1.1, I immediately installed it. This seems to have resolved the issue. I'm not sure whether it was actually related to the Mos app, but I thought I would share this with you.

I turned off automatic brightness adjust and it seems to have stopped the flickering. Whether this is a hardware issue for me or software, it's a solution I can live with.

I updated to 15.1 yesterday and till now the flicker is completely gone for me.

But did not see the fix in the release notes.

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.

Goode News - seems

I just updated to sequoia 15.0.1 and seems fixed, no longer flicking.

R

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.