1

I am running Monterey (12.5.1) on my 2019 MacBook Pro 16" (Intel i7 based, 6 core) and for the last couple of weeks, I am seeing the wallpapers (which is set to "custom folder" and enabled to change "every min") distorting to different levels of grey-outs on the wallpaper. I have an additional screen hooked up and this happens on either of the screens randomly. I have tried unplugging the external monitor but still this issue persist on my MacBook Pro screen randomly.

A screenshot is attached for your reference.

Yes I've restarted and yes everything on this computer is updated daily. Any idea what could be causing the issue and hopefully someone knows the fix to this issue?

Sample_ScreenShot

Giacomo1968
  • 53,069
  • 19
  • 162
  • 212
Eri
  • 41
  • 2
  • 6

1 Answers1

1

The image here looks like a damaged image. Typically with a damaged image, the parts that can be read will be cleanly rendered as the top half of your image shows, but then the rest of image is just a solid grey.

A good explanation of why this happens, and it is not macOS specific, can be found here in this other question and answer thread.

If you are seeing this randomly with background changes every minute or so, I believe this would be a case of the storage on the MacBook Pro being damaged.

Sure, the image itself might be damaged, but those desktop images don’t really change much, do they? So my guess is you need to run repairs on the storage on that MacBook Pro. I assume this is SSD storage since that is what the 2019 MacBook models (plain MacBook, Pro and Air) all use.

Just reboot into recovery mode by shutting down and restarting the machine while holding Command+R and then go to “Disk Utility” and run repairs. Do repairs on the partition as well as the parent device and then reboot the MacBook.

In the best case scenario, the repairs will solve this problem and life should go back to normal. In the worst case scenario, the SSD storage is somehow damaged and since the SSD storage on the 2019 MacBook models is baked into the mainboard, it would most likely need to have some level of profession Apple repair service attention.

Giacomo1968
  • 53,069
  • 19
  • 162
  • 212
  • Just a note: In Disk Utility, press Cmd/2 to be able to see the devices, not just the volumes. – Tetsujin Sep 07 '22 at 07:25
  • @Giacomo1968 Thank you for the edit and reply. I don't think the image is damaged as all the image in the folder opens up properly in other image viewers like Preview and Photo, and the grey-outs are random. Also, the same seemingly affected images would open properly at times and the grey-outs are completely random. Anyway, I'll run the Disk Repair in the recovery mode like you suggested to see if the SSD's working fine. I will update the findings shortly. Thanks – Eri Sep 07 '22 at 19:25
  • @Eri “Also, the same seemingly affected images would open properly at times and the grey-outs are completely random.” Yes. Exactly the issue I believe exists: The SSD is flaky and it sometimes loads cleanly others, not so much. I would also recommend you download and use [Onyx](https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html) to clear out caches. Install it, click the “Maintenance” tab, check all items, then click “Run Tasks.” It will deep clean caches on your system and restart the MacBook. Perhaps the images themselves are fine but the background image cache is messed up. This should fix it. – Giacomo1968 Sep 07 '22 at 20:40