screen saver freezes on macOS Tahoe

Yes, I have the exact same problem. I have a 2 week old 14” MacBook Pro with an M5 pro non-binned processor and 48GB RAM. Occurring right out of the box. I even re installed the OS factory reset from new. I have Tahoe 26.5 installed as of today. No improvements. Rebooting doesn’t change anything. I do have it running on the AC adapter, with the battery set to 80% charge. Tried high power mode, didn’t change anything. What does work, is turning off ProMotion.

issue:

Dropping hundreds of frames (stuttering, freezing, and pixelated) during playback of movie based screensavers. I’m using the redwood forest screensaver.

Also, the issue happens when playing a slideshow in iPhoto, which is worse performance than the screensaver. Interesting enough, if I move the mouse during slideshow playback, it works perfectly, leading me to believe that the display refresh rate drops to nearly zero.

Turning off ProMotion on the laptop display and setting to 60Hz fixes the issue, but then you’re not getting the featured 120Hz, or power savings, and everything else is choppy. This is 100% reproducible on my computer.

After a lot of research and troubleshooting, I submitted a bug report. While I am an engineer, it’s not my job as a customer to be your debugging resource.

Apple, this is a terrible bug, and I’m now considering returning the laptop as defective.

Apple, this is a terrible bug, and I’m now considering returning the laptop as defective.

Apple are not here. This is a community of end users. If you are serious about Apple seeing your issue (I have the same issue in 26.5 and 60mHz fixes it), use this:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

That lets Apple log the scale of a problem and assign resources to mitigation. Complaining and threatening to return the device are your prerogative but get zero traction here.

RasTy-P wrote:

I’m currently experiencing an issue with the screen saver on my MacBook Pro M4 running macOS Tahoe 26.4.

When the screen saver starts, it animates normally for a few seconds, but then it freezes and becomes completely static.

I’ve already performed a full erase and clean reinstall of macOS. After reinstalling, the issue was temporarily resolved, but it eventually returned.

This makes me suspect it might be a software-related issue rather than hardware.

Has anyone else encountered this problem on macOS Tahoe 26.4?

Are there any known fixes or workarounds?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

There are many issues with wallpaper and screen savers in macOS Tahoe...yes

if you are using w/ ProMotion the suggestion that reducing the refresh rate to 60 Hz may corrects the issue of stuttering/freezing. ref: Change the refresh rate on your MacBook Pro or ...

To be proactive you can file a bug report / submit your feedback here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos

Using the Screen Saver is a waste of resources and energy.

Set the Screen Saver to Never and the Display to turn off after 3 or 5 minutes in the Lock Screen Settings.