High Sierra screen artifacts

> First I tried to install High Sierra again, I thought it might have bugged on the last install. Nope.
> Then I backed up everything manually to an external hard drive and installed High Sierra from the scratch like I would be selling my mac, meaning I would have to install all my apps, fonts, and so on again. Did not help.

> After that I googled a lot how to do "downgrade" to the older version which Apple seems to made hard if you don't have experience with terminal or don't know about formatting but when I Followed multiple tutorials I managed to it quite easily but took a long time.

I did this last night and I can't promise I remember all the steps right way but shortly this is what I did I downloaded old os, made a USB stick installer and wiped everything in my computer. Found some good instructions here:https://www.macworld.com/article/2981585/operating-systems/how-to-make-a-bootabl e-os-x-10-11-el-capitan-installer-drive.…

1. Backup everything

2. Double check you backed up

3. Download the el capitan from App Store

4. Format, rename and partition 8-16gb USB stick the proper way (link up there tells everything^)
5. Move the installer to the formatted stick
6. Restart the computer with special command, erase everything from the hard drive (the link I posted did not mention this part so when I Rebooted with command + r and used disk utility to erase my hard drive (it will pop up macOS recovery with this command: About macOS Recovery - Apple Support)

7. Rebooted again with command + option to Install El capitan from the stick (the stick wont show with command +r )

8. Hope, pray and sacrifice your soul then wait that the installation goes all the way to the end and for me this took ages, it looked really worrying once in a while with looong stops only white screen showing or text saying " about a second left" meaning 20-30 minutes but IT WORKED.

No screen problems, ghosting or "burns", no lagging, no pinwheel of death at the moment.

Is this on your 2011 27" iMac? Some of those models had a defective GPU which gave out and was replaced on a recall that ended 4 years from the date of purchase. I had mine replaced just under the wire.

That looks like a graphics issue. Since that model iMac is considered vintage (except in California and Turkey) Apple will diagnose it free but can't do any repairs. I'd take it in to the nearest Apple Genius Bar for a free diagnostic test.

If you want it replaced you'll need to find an Authorized Apple Service Provider who'll have or can get parts and repair it. I've heard report of about $500 or so for the repair.

My 2011 iMac failed again about 6 weeks ago (graphics chip) and was laid to rest in a moving ceremony.

This is not "burn in". This is, I'm pretty sure a video driver problem.

The reason I say that is - The "burn in" stays on the Spaces "space" when I swipe.. so its a rendering issue.

Go to the apple menu and click on "About This Mac". The click on the version number of the OS (under the macOS High Sierra banner). You will then see an os build number shown next to the version (for example it might read 17D102)

Then use google, and look for "nvidia driver 17D102"

Go to the nvidia web site and follow the instructions to install the latest driver (in my case also a 680).

Oooh one more thing, I use a mouse prefs tool.. when you install the video driver it might ask you to verify the install in the security /privacy settings (if you have anything that gets in the way of mouse interaction you can click on that ALLOW button until you are blue in the face, it will not work) - i had to quit the mouse prefs tool before it would let me press the allow button...

Anyway I have installed the appropriate driver and in some pretty cursory tests I think it might be solved (I haven't had a chance to use my machine because its in the guest room in my house (and there are guests there), so i have to make do with this laptop).

Give a go and tell me if it sorts it.

I am also having the same issue on my late 2012 iMac 27".

It only started after I updated to High Sierra, screen was working perfectly before. The only way to get rid of the burn in is to run "Flurry" screensaver for a couple of hours, this removes the burn in temporarily.

Having to do this every lunch break and evening as I use the iMac all day for my job. Very frustrating!

Clearly there is a driver issue with some graphics cards. It outrageous that Apple is silent regarding this!

Have some very bad images to show but you can get the idea of the burn (this is quite mild, usually have a lot more browser window burn-ins).

I can confirm, based on another comment, that enabling the Flurry screensaver does indeed remove the burn-in. I started doing this yesterday and I haven't seen the issue since. Though, I'm not working all day long on this particular Mac, I do use it most of the night. We should all submit a formal ticket to Apple, but in the meantime you can enable the Flurry screensaver as a temp solution.

There is one method to reduce these effects. Tighten up your display sleep times to 10 minutes in Energy Saver and use a variable slide (animated) screen-saver pattern set to five minutes or just before your chosen display sleep time, in Desktop & Screen Saver. You should see a drastic improvement in this bug.

Wait for the next upgrade, but read the fine print first to discover whether it solved this particular problem. If not, don't update.

Good luck, Chris

rolled back to normal sierra and so far so good

probably not good for my lcd panel hardware to be constantly burning in. i would recommend anyone with same issue roll os back asap

remember to always time machine before an os update!

Nope... I take this back... This feels like a software issue. For a start, having a screen saver on for sooo long and the artefacts to still be there screams software. This is something to do with how the graphics are handled in "spaces".

I use parallels a lot, and when I came back to my machine I could see artefacts in the widgets space. Then when I switched coherence mode on in parallels and then switched back to full screen mode (and I did this quickly, so not long enough for any so called "burn in" to fade) - the artefacts in the widget page were gone!.

Therefore I revert back to my original assertion that this is a bug in HighSierra and its somehow related to the graphics card we use on this mac. (there is a lot of people with Nvidia 680MXs here).

Come on Apple pull your fingers out and sort this.

Having exactly same issues on High Sierra. Especially on dark grey backgrounds - see attached photo below

All those lighter elements are artifacts that are like ghosting of things that were displayed earlier - like fb page or icons of the background visible on the right side.

You should actually see a smooth grey background - below is a screenshot of the same thing:

Few things:

- artifacts above are visible only on my iMac screen

- they are not visible on the 2nd monitor

- had to take a photo just like LuxViz as they are not visible on screenshots

- when they start to appear - it seems that my iMac is slowing down - especially when I jump from one desktop to another - it's just jerky animation

- I assume that all that suff have something to do with Metal 2 introduced by Apple in High Sierra - as you can read on the internet: "Metal 2 includes driver optimizations, and Apple claims that it brings up to a 10 times better draw call throughput. More debugging tools are now available, and the Mac Window Server has been migrated to Metal as well to enhance performance of the system-wide animations."

- 2nd monitor issues:

I do not have artifacts but have strange grey rectangles appearing on dark backgrounds. And I can take screenshots of those "rectangles". Sometimes they are flickering. See below screenshots of Spotify app on 2nd montior and on iMac:

EXTERNAL MONITOR:

iMac DISPLAY (THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD LOOK)

On top of that I am experiencing "locking" issues - I have to restart my iMac as only my mouse cursor is responsive and nothing else, including not responsive keyboard and screens are not refreshed at all. But this is a known issue to Apple and you can find more info about this elsewhere.

I hope Apple will solve this issue soon - seems that 10.13.1 update is even worse.

My iMac specs:

iMac 27" Late 2012

3.4 GHZ Intel Core i7

16 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB

Same issue on my iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

After the upgrade to High Sierra image retention is much more prevalent.

Image retention is absolutely normal, but now happens almost immediately, is much more pronounced and take much longer to dissipate. It's also a weird reddish colour for some reason.

image of my desktop icons burned in after 4 minutes and switching over to another space

Yeah, I also think that's not really any kind of solution if you're doing anything productive. The fact is that screen retention wasn't really big problem before upgrading to High Sierra. I already submitted bug report to apple. There are no any replies from them yet. But I think you should all also submit bug reports so they can notice it. This forum is not official place to submit bugs. The more people submit the bug in the official place the more likely they will do something and react.

Same problem here

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

Tried installing Sierra on an external drive and the problem was gone. upgraded this installation to High Sierra, the problem reappeared.

same prob

easy screen burn in right after installing high sierra

late 2012 27" non retina

3.4 i7

680mx 2gb

have switched back to the mac driver instead of the nvidia driver for now but havent fully tested it
might be a nvidia driver issue not an os issue

Same issue here, 2015 5K iMac. Used for a year with 10.12 Sierra without issue. Updated to 10.13.3 High Sierra last week and now images are retained within 5 minutes of being on screen (like desktop icons etc).

Funnily enough, using Windows 10 in boot camp with screen on and static images displayed for hours does not see any burn in/retention.

[Edited by Host]

OK.. So now I have had time to plod about on my iMac...

I don't think this driver update has really had much of an effect.

There is really some kind of burn in.. and even through the lock screen (where it asks for the password) you can definitely make out details of the web page being looked at. (so much for security!).

Leaving the screen saver on has practically zero effect.. you come back even 10 minutes later and there is some content there, bleeding through.

Even after a reboot..

So. Sorry about giving you false hope.

Looks like thats just the way it is... It could be a side effect of the age of the screen.. I certainly don't remember this when the computer was new...

Thanks Apple for the built in obsolescence. 😟