This is troubling. I suddenly have a yellow border around Windows in various places on my MacBook Pro. This is on the external monitor only - it doesn't affect the built-in Retina display. I've checked the accessibility settings and found nothing out of the ordinary. Full keyboard access is off. Also, I don't knowingly have anything that would capture my screen.
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Yellow border around windows
- Thread starter Internaut
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Wild. My intuition says it has something to do with the way the external monitor is rendering the colours used in window shadows.
• Is the yellow only appearing atop certain shades of light grey?
• Is there any difference when the frontmost window is the active window (as opposed to an inactive window)?
• I don't suppose you've tried playing with different colour profiles for the external monitor in Display settings?
• Is the yellow only appearing atop certain shades of light grey?
• Is there any difference when the frontmost window is the active window (as opposed to an inactive window)?
• I don't suppose you've tried playing with different colour profiles for the external monitor in Display settings?
I think your intuition is close. The monitor is a Dell. Bought in 2020, but likely of 2018/2019 vintage. There's a Reddit post (with lots of thanks to the person who solved their flavour of the problem) that points the finger at the Dell Display Manager. However, I don't have that software, and Dell tells me it is not available for my monitor.
In my case, it appears to be either a bug in the latest Sequoia, an accessibility feature gone awry (or both), or something I've recently installed. Clues? Well,
- The problem goes away immediately if I switch to dark mode (it only occurs in light mode).
- I created a temporary new user, and in light mode, that user doesn't exhibit the problem.
Currently, HDMI is connected to a USB hub, which is in turn connected to one of the MacBook's Thunderbolt ports. The hub has no DP input, but I do have parts lying around that will provide a DP connection from the Dell's DP output to the MacBook. I'll give that a try, but note the comment I made above about a new user account not exhibiting the same problem.
That's always a clear indication it's something installed in your user account. It obviously is not a hardware issue or it would be presenting itself in your test user account.
Time to go hunting. Corrupt color profiles, a rogue extension of some kind, something like that.
If all else fails, you could also "declare bankruptcy" and start a new user account with your same Apple Account (yes, you can do this, no problem) and bring your files over.
More and more interesting.
I'd definitely review installed software, and I'd certainly visit "Settings > Accessibility > Display" – all kinds of stuff in there that might affect a specific user.
This reminds of a somewhat similar artifact seen in a ~12 year old 30" Dell 3014 Display also connected via HDMI. I don't have the Display connected at the moment, but I don't think the issue was ever 'fixed' but did seem background dependent as well. See strange pink tinted transparent overlay. I do not recall seeing the artifact on older Mac before connecting to the M1 Mac mini in January 2021.