If you’ve noticed odd screen flickering since installing macOS Tahoe, you’re not alone. A growing number of users are reporting brief but distracting display flickers, particularly when using Apple’s Studio Display.
macOS Tahoe introduced a frustrating display glitch for some users
In a post on Mastodon earlier this month, Dan Moren said that he has seen screen flickering in macOS Tahoe when using his Mac mini and MacBook Air with his Studio Display. MacRumors also highlighted the problem this week:
Flickering happens most often when switching between apps that feature stark white backgrounds, or scrolling through webpages on light backgrounds. Any app can cause the flickering, and sometimes it just seems to be random. When flickering occurs, it’s typically a brief flicker, but the display can also flicker several times in a row for a few seconds at a time. Switching from dark content to light content can almost always trigger a flicker on affected machines
In a post on Six Colors, Moren says that he’s tried turning off features including True Tone, Night Shift, and automatic brightness to fix the problem:
“I’ve tried deactivating several of the display features to see if makes a difference (TrueTone, Night Shift, automatically adjusted brightness); it felt like maybe turning off Night Shift helped, but it’s one of those frustrating intermittent issues that can be hard to track down.”
Unfortunately for most users, it seems that the latest macOS 26.1 and macOS 26.2 updates haven’t fixed this problem. In fact, some users say macOS 26.2 in particular might have made things worse. Apple hasn’t acknowledged the problem at all.
One detail that’s unclear is whether this problem is exclusive to the Studio Display or if it affects other displays as well. Anecdotally, I haven’t had any problems using my Pro Display XDR with macOS Tahoe and my M4 MacBook Pro.
Are you experiencing any sort of screen flickering issues since updating to macOS Tahoe? Let us know down in the comments.
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