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.

I still have them though with Sequoia 15.0.1 and it's more frequent than before.

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.

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.

Hello all,

Here the same in France on Macbook Air M2, everything was working like charm probably seems Sequoia update... Wallpaper's flickering alternatively when it wants or not. Menu bar and dock are not... this CAN'T be a cable issue at all.

Trying to update to public 15.1b4, will keep you informed of resolution or not.

P.S.: that's good to see that I'm not the only one having this issue...

I thought I was going crazy.

It happens in the background while I’m in an active window. I see the background flicker to a light grey. I only have a black background so it’s very distracting and concerning.

Have the same issue here since installed OS 15.01

Also notice that the connection to any second monitor seems to be interrupted shortly as well. Even the wacom tablett (connected to the monitor) seems to be disconnected for a split second and shows a message when it reconnects. Strange: all windows in use seem to not effected (browser, photoshop, etc.) mainly the desktop seems to suffer from this bug.

Still getting the flickering screen. The screen flashes a black background for about half a second, about 3-4 times per minute. Details:

• This is on a Mac mini M1 2020 connected to a Samsung M8 smart monitor via Thunderbolt
• This is after having upgraded to mac OS 15.0.1
• It's happening with all wallpapers -- dynamic as well as static photos as well as just a color background. I can even see it if I switch to a black background because there's a moment of flicker before the screen goes black
• I do not have the Mendeley web importer installed

Let's get this fixed Apple.

Goode News - seems

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

R

Here, two days with 15.1 b2 and intensive use and NO flickering. (Macbook Pro M1 2020 with 16GB)

Same problem here after Sequoia installing with a Macbook Pro 2020 M1. I'm using chrome with Raindrop.io, uBlock Origin and Last Pass extensions. Not using Mendeley or Safari for now, and not using wallpaper, only solid color. My suspicions are from Chrome or VLC video player.

I appreciate that quite a few people have found your suggestion helpful. However, I do not think that this extension is so widely installed that it can ultimatly be the culprit. 🤔

Simply, in my opinion it appears that Apple is uninterested to address the simple fact that dynamic wallpapers/screensavers have been buggy since Sequoia on 8GB machines. iCloud integration into almost everything in the OS, plus the new widgets and iPhone mirroring all contribute to a slower/dumber OS.

They really have to sit down and figure out if they want their computers to be computers or hybrids between computer and iOS. As far as I am concerned, the attempt to bring iOS to MacOS makes the whole Mac experience ******** if it the OS is not stable/responsive as we have all come to expect from a Mac.

Sonoma in its current state is obviously laggy/buggy. Sure, once you get to work, everything works well for the most part. However over the course of a day or week, you'll simply see little signs that the OS is not refined on the m1 8GB machines and, by the looks of the comments in this thread, more advance Macs as well.

Also, M1 8GB Macs are way to new a computer to even tempt me to think I need to upgrade. Hence the frustration...

Splurging on a new Mac with 16GB is a ****** option when they push the 8GB variety of their computers so hard.

Hold managers that ok these releases more accountable!

🤓

I agree that it doesn't seem to be a plugin issue, but I don't see why iCloud integration would necessarily be a problem. Other than this issue, Sequoia is working fine for me. And on an M2 MBA 8gb ram, dynamic wallpapers worked just fine under Sonoma.

I have the same issue on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. It started after updating to macOS Sequoia 15.0. I uninstalled the Dell monitor app and Magnet app, but the screen is still flickering. Any advice, please?

Are you sure this is the same issue? In my experience, this is purely a cosmetic problem. The background is flickering; however, nothing is happening with open apps, including Finder, in any negative way.

Losing external monitors for a few seconds and experiencing screen blips during zoom meetings seems more like a hardware issue to me. Can you try using a different port on your MacBook (like USB-C or Thunderbolt), or test a different monitor using HDMI (even a TV)?

P.S. I have a feeling that a few days after the 15.0.1 upgrade, things improved significantly with the background flickering. It's interesting because I remember it flickering right after the upgrade, which left me a bit disappointed.