Tahoe Display Flicker
Mac users with the Studio Display have been complaining about intermittent flickering since the update launched in September. There are also complaints from users who have other kinds of displays, so it might be a bug that is affecting more than one type of external monitor.
We have experienced this issue with a MacBook Pro running macOS Tahoe connected to a Studio Display, and the macOS Tahoe 26.1 and macOS Tahoe 26.2 updates haven't improved the situation at all. In fact, the flickering seems to be getting worse in recent days.
I’m glad this is finally gaining some attention because I have been seeing this since the earliest betas of Tahoe back in June (I complained about it again more recently). And that’s been on multiple Macs, including my Mac mini attached to a Studio Display, my old M1 MacBook Air, and my current M4 MacBook Air.
It’s thought that this dithering causes a flickering effect which, in some cases, can even cause headaches. Thankfully, a third-party utility called Stillcolor can override the display controller’s behavior.
Disabling dithering via Stillcolor is reported to have fixed the issue for some. Unfortunately, others say it hasn’t worked for them, so your mileage may vary.
Previously:
Update (2025-12-22): eric:
wow I thought I was losing my mind of my m4 Mac mini was going south. I don’t see it in my work MBP without Tahoe.. didn’t think it was the OS but I guess it is! It’s not bad and infrequent but unnerving either way.
Update (2026-01-09): Max Seelemann:
Today my Studio Display started to flicker.
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I connected to a clients big meeting room tv straight from my MBP HDMI the other day, and it was constant glitching and flicker.
My colleague running Linux had no issues. Adding a USBC dongle fixed it for me.
I don't know if this is related, but: one of the screen savers built in to macOS is simply called "Macintosh", and shows a pixelated depiction of the classic Mac interface. I had been using this as my screen saver prior to Tahoe. Under Tahoe, it flickers incessantly, so I had to switch to something else.
Press space bar on Finder to Preview a PDF on my MacBook Air M2 2022, Tahoe 26.2, the MacBook Air display flicks randomly.
