Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
After I updated to Mavericks I noticed that a strip of pixels will randomly flash at times right under the menu bar. The line is maybe 1/4 of the screen in the center. If I go into mission control or launch pad it goes away for a while but comes back eventually. Does anyone know what would cause this? I have tried rebooting/updating to 9.1 and it still happens.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
I just had an idea and my theory was correct. When it stopped I had just recently switched to a lighter desktop background so I switched it back the the darker one I had before and I noticed it again. I just hadn't been able to see it because my background was so light. And it does only do it when I use the desktop hotcorner and goes away if I go to mission control or launch pad. I switched it to the lighter one and can still see it it's just not as noticeable so I never paid attention to it.
Yep, I thought it sounded strange when you said it had just disappeared one day, pesky thing won't go away permanently!
I have a friend that has an iMac, He's going to update to Mavericks today and let me know if his does the same thing. I shouldve just enabled hot corners on all the computers in the apple store and tested them lol
Yeah let me know what happens with your friends although you may have to direct him on how to do it, make sure that when he A) uses the 'Desktop' Hot Corner as any of the other Hot Corner tools don't produce the fault, and B) make sure that when he does the 'Desktop' Hot Corner there are windows passing upwards through the top menu bar.
I enabled the 'Desktop' Hot Corner on one of the rMBP's in the Apple store and I couldn't get it to replicate the problem that we have. Also the guy there said he hadn't noticed it on his or any others he's worked on as he said it would have annoyed the heck out of him in terms of it being a distraction to your eyes.
Well I can safely confirm that it's not something related to hardware, one new logic board (including graphics card and the rest) later and the flickering pixels are still there.
The guy at the Apple shop said that he had even demonstrated the issue to headquarter technician team to see if they had seen anything like it previously and they were none the wiser either.
Seems like it's some 3rd party software but who knows what that could be, it could take absolutely ages to find that by rebuilding up your apps etc from scratch one-by-one testing each time you add a new app. Think I will have to sit on this one and hope that it gets killed in some kind of software update in the future.
There has to be some way to get them to submit a software issue ticket to try and find the problem.
My friend never got the chance to update but after trying a few iMacs in bestbuy and the Apple Store near me it seems like its something in the macbooks unless we just havent come across an iMac with the same issue.
I also just tried turning the translucent menu bar off and it still did it so I guess we'll just have to suck it up for now and hope they get it fixed.
An erase and re-install of Mavericks will stop it, as the guy at the store did just that with my machine (by partitioning the hard drive) and the issue disappeared completely. However, it can be tricky because if you plan on restoring from a TimeMachine back-up then this will most likely bring the issue back across, so it would mean erase and re-install then gradually add back your software and files manually testing it at each step, sorry but I don't have time for that.
In terms of it being exclusive to MacBook's that could be true but it's definitely not happening on all MacBook's as I've tried to reproduce the issue on 4 other MacBook's both old and new over the last week and no sign of it, also I found a thread on here some weeks ago (if I find it again I'll post a link to it) and I'm sure it was doing the same thing on some guys iMac.
Either way this is going to have to be sat through by the looks of it. At least now when I come to sell this machine in 3 or 4 years time I know that an erase and reinstall ready for selling will rid it of the issue.
Since its a software problem a reinstall is a waste of time. As soon as you install the software in question again the issue will come back.
It's either:
ScreenSharing
VLC
Photoshop CS6
And occurs when using a hot corner for show desktop
indiekiduk2 wrote:
Since its a software problem a reinstall is a waste of time. As soon as you install the software in question again the issue will come back.
It's either:
ScreenSharing
VLC
Photoshop CS6
And occurs when using a hot corner for show desktop
Yes and no, it's a waste of time if you don't find it, but if you re-install each app one by one onto a fresh install of mavericks, and test in between each one then you may locate it, yes that is very time-consuming, hence I'm not going to be doing it 🙂
I have to disagree on it possibly being Screen Sharing, VLC or Photoshop 6
I don't have VLC or Photoshop 6, nor do I use Screen Sharing ever. I have Photoshop Creative Cloud on my rMBP and my brother has it on his rMBP, yet my brother has never had this issue whatsoever.
Does anyone else with the problem use Photoshop?
I use it on a windows machine but not my macbook. It just picks and chooses which apps it wants to do it with. Safari, Messages, Facetime, Numbers, and Maps does it to me but Mail, the App store, and iPhoto do not (those are my most used thats why I listed them).
Hi!
I'm new to this forum (or forums in generall really) but I thought I might be able to contribute to this.
I'm experiencing the same issue and I haven't found a solution. However I think I have figured something out.
Watch this video: http://youtu.be/JmDEpmy_DVY
Notice that when I select the first window after having started the screen recording, the flickering doesn't appear. But when I bring the second window to front it does. And once it has appeared it stays until I "reset" it by "Show all program windows" (or any action that would hide the menu bar temporarily).
Once "reset" the window in focus works fine, but when I switch windows the bug appears again.
This method works with other windows than Finder, but for demostrative purposes I made it as simple as possible.
Can you confirm if this method works on your machines?
/Alex
Hi Alex,
Yes your issue is the same as ours, I've tried everything and so has my local apple technician who has also replaced all the chips/boards to no avail, the only way he could stop it happening on my rMBP was with a fresh install of Mavericks (i.e. not sure yet if restoring from a Time Machine backup would bring he issue across with it), meaning it is related to some software that we (on this thread) have had or still have on our Macs, either that or we were unlucky and our Mavericks has corrupted itself somehow, as it's quite a rare problem apparently.
So, at some stage I will do a fresh reinstall of Mavericks and build my account back up, just not now as I'm busy traveling and working on it every day.
Interesting video that rightly shows the problem.
I've gotten the same flickering problem here but: it mostly shows up when the first window is Safari.
More precisely, when the first window is Safari, it happens 100% of the time after using the "show desktop" function (by either using a hot corner or a keyboard command).
It also happens is other conditions that I can't reproduce accurately.
I guess this is 100% software, either video or App Nap related.
For me, this first happened after Mavericks update, on a 2012 MBA.
Safari is the worst one for me as well.
I had a thought come to me the other day that maybe the issue was coming from an internet downloaded app (Flash, Silverlight, etc) but after thinking about it longer I remembered that my girlfriends Macbook Air was doing the same thing right out of the box without any plugin type apps so it would have to be in the system itself.
Hopefully they'll resolve this issue soon but until then we're stuck with it.
Flashing pixels below menu bar?
