Strange Chrome browser graphical glitches

[CITguy]

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This problem appeared earlier this week on an older version of macOS (v10.15.4, I think). Upgrading to 10.15.5 and rebooting seemed to have helped at the time, but it returned today.

As others have pointed out, disabling hardware acceleration does work as a workaround, but also not a long-term solution.



Testing

I was able to reliably trigger the glitch on multiple browsers by viewing search results at DuckDuckGo. I checked multiple browsers for the glitch.

Here are my results.


Microsoft Edge (chromium based; v83.0.478.54)

• immediately glitches upon opening the settings
• disabling hardware acceleration prevents the glitch

Opera (chromium based; v69.0.3686.36)

• glitches on the DuckDuckGo search results (same as Chrome)
• disabling hardware acceleration prevents the glitch
• toggling "Allow use of computer's dedicated GPU" has no effect, when hardware acceleration is enabled

Firefox (v77.0.1)

• I'm unable to trigger the glitch.
• Hardware acceleration is enabled via the "Use recommended performance settings".
  
  • I even tested custom settings, with "Use hardware acceleration when available" checked.
    

Safari (v13.1.1)

• I'm unable to trigger the glitch.
• I'm unable to find any setting to control hardware acceleration.

Conclusions

1. macOS version is irrelevant
   1. I've observed the glitch on both 10.15.5 (latest) and on a previous version of macOS.
2. it is related to hardware acceleration on Chromium
   1. non-Chromium browsers do not seem to exhibit the glitch
   2. Electron apps cannot be ruled out as exempt from the glitch as I've not observed the glitch outside of a browser.
3. disabling hardware acceleration prevents the glitch, but is not a long-term solution

Hopefully this information can help others troubleshoot the issue.

 

[jafico1]

I also am having this issue when I run SketchUp Web using Safari 13.1.1 on my 16" with 5500M - I seem to be the only one who has this issue on Safari which is a little disconcerting. Here's my specs and a screenshot of the issue for everyone's information 😄. You can't disable HW acceleration without breaking SketchUp I think because it needs WebGL to work. Interestingly it works fine in Firefox ESR

It looks worse in Chrome unfortunately as well ☹️. Software rendering works, but it is as slow as molasses:

 

[taedouni]

I unfortunately had just ran into this issue. I was wondering if anyone else had an update.

 

[serge94]

I also had this but it's been working almost fine since switching from OpenGL to Metal from the Chrome settings. Now I get random red rectangles every once in a while (I think when there are SVGs rendered in the website).

 

[Andreas Schmelas]

Any updates on this? It's getting really annoying ... also switching Chrome from OpenGL to Metal didn't help for long :/

 

[burakcalik]

Same issue here for a few months. 16" Macbook Pro, AMD Radeon Pro 5300M. External display connected.

I haven't seen this issue for a few weeks, sometimes it disappears for a very long time. But now it returned again for a few days.

 

[220kwsnz]

Just thought I'd chip in - I don't think the issue is restricted to Macs or even AMD cards.
I'm experiencing the same Chrome glitching and I'm on a 2020 Razer Blade 15 (Win10), i7-10875H and RTX 2080 Super Max-Q...!?

 

[markedlymac]

Well this sucks!

Add me to the 16" MBP owner list who is receiving this issue as of half an hour ago!

Interesting post above mine. Could it be a macOS bug, not hardware? Even if so, that's as much as a manufacturer fault. Apple needs to fix this.

 

[zofrex]

I am seeing the same issue, and thank you everyone who posted about it previously, it's good to know I'm not alone.

I experimented with disabling various Chrome flags to see if there was a way to fix the problem with a lower performance impact than disabling hardware acceleration entirely, which is a big hit.

On my machine, the problem seems to have gone away by disabling "Out of process rasterization" in chrome://flags.

Of course, it's hard to confirm for sure as the problem is intermittent. But right now, if I re-enable that setting the problem immediately re-appears, and if I disable it it goes away again.

If you're having this problem, try disabling "Out of process rasterization" and see if that works for you?

 

[markedlymac]

Well I did this and today I'm no longer getting it at all:

- I just re-enabled "Automatic graphics switching" in system preferences, then re-disabled it. (Back to dGPU all the time.)

Haven't seen it since. Granted it's only been a day.

Update: another day, glitch still gone...

 

[MacBH928]

you can fix it, and many other things by abandoning Chrome for FireFox or Brave /s

I am interested to know if this is glitch can be triggered on Brave, which is based on Chromium. Brave is like a De-Googled Chrome and open source. Near 1:1 replica of Chrome.

 

[achung]

I also have this issue. Maybe it's a problem with Chromium?

I've noticed this with Chrome, Vivaldi, Spotify, and Microsoft Teams, all of which use Chromium. I've been having some serious issues with overheating, which is when these graphical glitches seem to strike most often. On browsers, this happens most frequently while watching Youtube videos. I don't see the same issues in Firefox or Safari.

Running the MacBook Pro 16", Radeon Pro 5300M, attached to 2 external monitors, Catalina 10.15.6. If this is an OS-related issue, the latest updates haven't solved the problem.

 

[cheesechoker]

It does seem to be a bug in Chromium.

I just started seeing this after updating Catalina to 10.15.7 (19H2). Prior to that, everything was fine.

 

[Olivier Lebel]

Same for me, on a brand new Mac Book Pro 16", running Catalina 10.15.7, with an external display. Disappeared by disabling "Out of process rasterization" in chrome://flags.

 

[venkmanpeter]

same here, macbook pro 16'' 10.15.6 (19G2021), Chrome 86.0.4240.183 - suddenly appeared. connected displays are a 4k benq (usb3) and a full hd benq (HDMI via apple adapter)

 

[Duncspur]

.........and it's back. 10.15.5 made it disappear. Upgrade to 10.15.7 and it is doing it again.

 

[errrr]

.........and it's back. 10.15.5 made it disappear. Upgrade to 10.15.7 and it is doing it again.

Same here, upgraded from 10.15.6 to 10.15.7 and it started reappearing (this time in VSCode).

 

[asv56kx3088]

I no longer experience this bug since updating to Big Sewer.

 

[DWIGHT_SCHRUTE]

Still happening on Big Sur. Got trolled by having the bug in this page.

Fixed with the chrome hardware disabling fix.

Running on MBP 16", with external monitor.

Dwight Schrute.

Assistant forum manager.

 

[dejayc]

Same for me, on a brand new Mac Book Pro 16", running Catalina 10.15.7, with an external display. Disappeared by disabling "Out of process rasterization" in chrome://flags.

I arrived at this same fix by playing with a bunch of flags. "Out of process rasterization" is definitely the culprit.

 

[cnbjorsnen]

MBP16 base model
Catalina 10.15.7
Chrome 87.0.4280.88
2 External monitors

Issue occured only on some websites in chrome.

Have been experiencing it occasionally for ~6 months.

Out of process rasterization didn't fix it for me ❌
Disabling hardware acceleration did however fit it ✅

Hoping for a permanent fix soon.

 

[cbcaio]

Same issue here, reported running Big Sur 11.1 on a Mac Book Pro 16" with Radeon 550M. Took my computer to apple support and they are going to replace the logic board, seems to be the only way to solve it guys :/
I've been in contact with their advanced support for the last 2 months and we tried everything, only recently identified that my performance issue was actually related to video card issue due to these glitches that started showing up.

Hopefully it will be all ok after replacement, back news is that they postponed replacement date because of covid -.-

 

[emilushi]

Same issue for me as well:
MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
Processor 2,3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
Memory 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

It doesn't happen on all the pages but only on some pages, for example here in the forum i didn't happen anywhere except when I tried to play an embed youtube video and it happens on all websites if I open Inspect Element.

 

[systemBuilder]

I have been experiencing this bug for 7 months, including tonight. It's nice to know that unplugging the power cord can sometimes switch you back to integrated graphics, fixing the problem!

Chrome has a LOT of gpu bugs and when i worked for Google Search, there were several Chrome bugs left unfixed for 5Y. One amazing bug was that the reopen closed window menu item never showed up the first time you clicked the menu bar (i.e. the menu item for CTRL-Shift-T). It showed up the 2nd and later times you clicked it! The developers know what was the problem but could not fix it !!!

The only platform where chrome actually WORKED back in my time there (2013-2018) was on the MacBook, because all the Chrome developers use macbooks. Now it seems they can't even keep it working on their own laptops!!!

The previous GPU bug happened only on goobuntu Linux - if you open 50 windows, the GPU fritzes out and you have to kill & restart chrome, no exceptions. THAT bug was left unfixed for 5Y! I imagine that we'll have to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome ... forever. After all, now that there are no competitors to chrome (Microsoft gave up and joined chromium project), and they have nixed the octane benchmarks, there is no visibility and no incentives to keep Google honest any more ...

 

[traCkready]

This issue is still present on Big Sur with a base 16MPB. It's very frustrating, as it always seems to happen at the worst times. I really am shocked this bug is so long lived.

I would like to add 1 thing though, my wife (the most prevalent user of this machine ATM) randomly was having mouse lock ups when using chrome, like full on mouse lock up or very heavy stuttering. I had logitech software installed to give application specific functions, uninstalled that seemed to resolve the issue. I wonder if some program in conjunction with Chrome is causing the issue? I don't run much anything else that I know of though.