Horizontal lines screen burn-in when using Chrome or Safari on iMac display

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49 points

Horizontal lines screen burn-in when using Chrome or Safari on iMac display

Hi,

this bug is so strange, I don't even know where to begin to troubleshoot it. I have an early 2008 24" iMac with up-to-date components. Still runs very well. I've installed the Yosemite update (Mountain Lion to Yosemite) the day it came out and started to notice an odd behavior. Whenever I use safari or chrome for a prolonged time I get gray horizontal lines burnt into the screen across the area that was covered by either the chrome or safari window. No other apps cause this behavior. The craziest thing is, that after playing a burn-in reset video on youtube fullscreen, I have the same gray lines across the entire display, which leads me to believe that there is something in the rendering engine that causes these lines to burn in. I have a mountain lion clone on an external disk and booted into that to see if they problems would persist, and that confirmed that the burn-in does not happen on Mountain Lion. I'm attaching a close up of the lines.

What's happening here? Can anybody help me or suggest anything? Why only browsers?

Thanks so much,

Sebastian

Posted on Oct 19, 2014 8:54 AM

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Answer 1

Sebastian-S Author

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49 points

Nov 5, 2014 10:53 AM in response to Sebastian-S

bump. Anybody else seeing this on their mac?

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Answer 2

eljonco

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41 points

Dec 11, 2014 6:05 AM in response to Sebastian-S

Yep, same here after upgrading from 10.8.5 to 10.10.1. This is not a burning-in thing, it appeared within an hour.

During quantitative image processing, in an image window I noticed grey lines horizontally across the screen in a pattern we know from the Mac OS windows back in 10.2 (Jaguar_on_G4.png). When moving the image, the lines stay at the same pixels of the screen, as if you move a semi-transparent image over a striped desktop image.

Both the image processing application and Digital Color Meter verified that the pattern was not in the video memory (ie. pixel values are all the same), but just visible on the screen. Rather annoying if image analysis is one's bread and butter.

When I move the image across to an external DELL monitor, the lines have vanished.

The darker the object, the more noticeable the lines.

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Answer 3

Dec 12, 2014 1:20 AM in response to Sebastian-S

I have the exact same problem as the Eljoncos image. The stripes / lines on my screen is not that visible because of a Retina resolution but they are still there. In my case I see the lines more clearly on a light background.

Any of you found a solution?

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Answer 4

Sebastian-S Author

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49 points

Jan 2, 2015 1:57 PM in response to JonasKjær

Hi guys,

sorry it took me so long to reply, for some reasons I missed your responses. We definitely all have the same issue, thank you Eljonco for posting that image - that's exactly what it looks like! Quick question for both you and JonasJaer: I've only noticed this behavior while using a browser (the lines appear in the exact area that the browser window occupies).

I've figured it out for me though. Here's a few facts first. Maybe you could confirm this for me, that would be hugely helpful. I've visited the Apple Store in New York City and the geniuses there said they had never seen or heard of this issue. So far I've been able to trace this back to a code change in Mavericks. I had skipped Mavericks on my iMac due to installation problems and went straight from Mountain Lion to Yosemite. My 2009 MacBook doesn't have the screen burn-in problem, but when I tilt the screen to an extreme viewing angle I can see the same line pattern on the screen! It's easier visible on a gray background, like the gray bars to the side of this forum for instance. This is definitely a software problem - I still have cloned copies of both my old Mavericks and Mountain Lion installations and Mavericks produces the same issue. Only Mountain Lion is free of horizontal lines.

Now to my solution - I swear to god this is so weird. In another thread, somebody mentioned this might be related to multiple screens. I've extended my iMac screen on a secondary display (no mirroring) and THAT FIXES IT. How does this make any sense? I came back here to share my thoughts in the hope that this will help you and other people as well. Alas we're a small crowd of folks that are still using the kind of "outdated" hardware that would even be affected by this problem so I doubt Apple will ever fix it. For me however, having a secondary screen connected was much cheaper than replacing my iMac with a newer model.

Please report back with your findings, I'd love to hear if you can replicate this on your end.

Happy new year!

Sebastian

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Answer 5

eljonco

Level 1

41 points

Jan 3, 2015 1:13 AM in response to Sebastian-S

Happy new year to you too. On my second monitor (a portrait rotated to 1080x1920 Dell monitor placed left of the main screen), the stripes do not show. They only show on the main screen. I went from 10.8 to 10.10. Monday I'll look to see if fiddling with monitor settings change anything.

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Answer 6

Sebastian-S Author

Level 1

49 points

Jan 3, 2015 9:06 AM in response to eljonco

Is the second monitor always on? Could you try and make the secondary display your primary one by dragging over the menu bar? That's how I got rid of the lines. Can you do this and wait roughly 45 minutes to see if the burn-in disappears?

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Answer 7

Jan 3, 2015 10:40 AM in response to Sebastian-S

In my case it was a hardware issue. I turned in the computer to my local Apple premium reseller and they changed the display. That fixed the issue for me.

best regards Jonas

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Answer 8

Jan 27, 2015 8:05 PM in response to Sebastian-S

I have had this problem for about 3 months. First it was one line, then 2, now its at 3 and a grayed out area.

I updated to Yosemite after it happened (completely possible that in updating I had skipped an update in there, maybe Mavericks, can't remember having it).

My display issues started after watching a Netflix video in my Chrome browser. The 2nd line appeared after streaming another Netflix movie.

Moral of the story, don't watch Netflix.

Kidding.

Zapped the Pram, no dice.

I may go for a 2nd display if I have to.

I also noticed that I was hearing the fan start up loudly before but not anymore. Could it be a cooling overheating video card issue?

Thanks.

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