Bought a M2 Extremely Mac Professional earlier this yr, which pressured me to improve my OS from Monterey to Ventura (and now Sonoma). Ever since then, have been experiencing a recurring downside that begins taking place, not instantly after booting up, however after a number of hours of uptime. There’s a complete cluster of signs, however the obvious and customary ones are the next:

1. It turns into unattainable to edit photos (HEIC, PNG, JPEG) in Preview. For instance, I open a full measurement HEIC pic from my iPhone and I’m going to resize it right down to 1000 pixels extensive. Generally I get visible artefacts whereas the Resize dialog is open (notice the gray packing containers right here):

   

   After which once I press OK both I get a clean (as a substitute of a small image):

   

   or the image is resized, however then it’s unattainable to put it aside. I get an error that claims “The doc couldn’t be autosaved”:

   

   And even when I attempt to revert the change, I get “The operation couldn’t be accomplished”:

   

   This doesn’t simply have an effect on Preview. On this state, I discover that once I open photos in a third-party picture editor like Pixelmator Professional or Affinity Photograph 2, the app shows a clean (empty artboard) immediately as a substitute of the particular image, even earlier than I attempt to resize it.

   Crucially, in Affinity Photograph 2, there’s a setting to disable {Hardware} Acceleration (beneath Efficiency).

   

   If I disable it, stop and relaunch the app after which attempt to open an image file, it really works high-quality. Therefore my suspicion that this can be a bug involving {hardware} acceleration.

2. One other quite common symptom in macOS when the cluster of signs begins taking place is that, in numerous apps, buttons in dialog packing containers turn into invisible, both as a result of they don’t seem to be displayed in any respect or as a result of they’re displayed in white over the very mild gray background color of the button, which makes them unattainable to learn. (My system is in Gentle Mode, NOT Darkish Mode. White textual content labels and descriptions are presupposed to be in Darkish Mode solely.) This occurs, for instance, within the Notifications dialog field within the Podcasts app:

   

   This impacts common buttons and likewise checkboxes, which disappear altogether when they’re checked and reappear when they’re unchecked. If I go away the dialog field open and swap to one thing else, which places it within the background, the buttons reappear of their background kind. They disappear once more once I deliver the dialog again to the foreground.

3. There are various, many different signs that begin occurring on the identical time, as soon as the Mac is on this state. For instance, display screen recording stops working altogether. I can begin a recording in QuickTime Participant, however once I cease it, no film file will get created. I exploit CleanShot X for display screen photographs, and when this begins occurring, display screen photographs nonetheless work, but it surely turns into unattainable to edit them in CleanShot X, as a result of a number of instruments now not work correctly (blurring doesn’t blur, textual content packing containers keep invisible once I sort textual content, and so on.). FaceTime stops working correctly. (I can name somebody, however they can not see me or hear me, and typically I can’t see them both, simply hear them.) The Maps utility additionally begins appearing up. Zooming out and in now not works, issues begin flickering like loopy, or going utterly black.

   I’ve, rather more hardly ever, additionally seen video corruption in Firefox or Google Chrome, which might be alleviated by turning {hardware} acceleration off in these apps and relaunching them.

   In any other case, when all these signs begin taking place, quitting and relaunch the affected app doesn’t assist in any respect.

   Nevertheless, I’ve discovered that quitting a “huge” app like Safari, during which I sometimes have a lot of tabs open with numerous internet pages, briefly alleviates a number of the signs. Photographs turn into editable once more, buttons are displayed correctly once more. However once I relaunch Safari, which reopens all its home windows, after a short while, the issue begins taking place once more.

   I’ve additionally discovered that if I stop all operating apps, the issue disappears for an extended whereas. However once I relaunch issues, the issue comes again after some time.

   If I reboot the Mac utterly, then I’m OK for a couple of hours, after which finally the issues begin reoccurring.

I’ve been involved with AppleCare and have needed to attempt every kind of issues. Not one of the issues they’ve made me do have helped up to now. They requested me to improve from Ventura to Sonoma with a view to see if that might assist. It has really made issues worse, by shortening the delay after a reboot earlier than the issue begins taking place once more.

The latest factor that I’ve needed to do is to do a clear set up of macOS on a brand new quantity. I want about 20 third-party apps simply to have the ability to operate for my work. However I did solely reinstall the important ones, and even that was sufficient to trigger the issue to start out taking place once more (inside lower than 48 hours).

The one helpful side of that is that it has enabled me to eradicate as doable culprits all of the apps that I had not but reinstalled when the issue begin occurring once more. For instance, the issue is not brought on by a Safari extension (I hadn’t put in any but), by any kext (I hadn’t put in any but), by the Rogue Amoeba apps I exploit for controlling sound (SoundSource, Audio Hijack, Loopback), by utilities like Default Folder X, SmoothScroll, HazeOver, Elgato Stream Deck, Bartender, CleanShot X, iStat Menus, and so on. All these had not but been reinstalled earlier than the bug began reoccurring on the clear set up of macOS that I did.

The apps that I had already reinstalled by the point the bug began reoccurring embody MailMate, the Microsoft Workplace apps, LaunchBar, Authy, Bitwarden, Acrobat Reader, Google Chrome, Typinator, Keyboard Maestro, Numbers, Pages, Plex Media Server, and some others. I want all these every day and I can’t set up each individually and wait a number of days till putting in the following one, with a view to see if the one I put in most just lately is the perpetrator.

At this stage, it’s actually onerous to imagine that the issue is brought on by a single app, both an Apple app or a third-party app. It actually looks like this can be a macOS bug that begins occurring after a certain quantity of uptime, when useful resource consumption begins so as to add up.

And, due to the Affinity Photograph 2 state of affairs, and likewise the rarer video corruption in Google Chrome and Firefox, that are the one apps I do know the place {hardware} acceleration might be turned off, often with dramatic enchancment, evidently it’s a bug that entails {hardware} acceleration.

I’ve run the {hardware} diagnostic on the Mac Professional and there are not any reported points. So it’s onerous to imagine (despite the fact that it is not unattainable in concept) that this can be a {hardware} defect in my explicit machine. The one approach to discover out for positive can be to ask Apple to interchange this Mac Professional with one other one and emigrate every part and see if the issue occurs. I’ve not but mentioned this risk with Apple, they usually have not recommended it but.

That stated, if it’s not a {hardware} defect, I’ve but to come back throughout a single report of some other Mac consumer experiencing the identical factor. I had been operating the identical software program on a 2020 Mac Professional for years earlier than this new buy with none such downside.

Yesterday, Apple requested me to attempt to do a display screen recording of the issue taking place in Preview with autosave not working and so on. I attempted, however the easy reality of operating Display screen Recording on the identical time precipitated Preview to turn into very unresponsive (with the SPOD) for a really very long time. It will definitely gave me management again, however once I stopped the display screen recording, no film file was created. So all I used to be in a position to do is to take a collection of display screen photographs of the issue, which I did (and submitted to Apple, with particulars). Then, a short while later, I attempted to make use of CleanShot X’s personal display screen recording characteristic, and this really trigger a kernel panic. It is the primary time that I see the bug related to a kernel panic.

Often, even when the bug is going on and all of the signs described above are in full show, every part else on the Mac continues to work high-quality. I can nonetheless work in my phrase processors, I can nonetheless use Zoom or Microsoft Groups to videoconference with different folks, I can nonetheless watch movies with QuickTime Participant or IINA, I can nonetheless stream movies to my Apple TV with Plex Media Server, and so on.

So, that is the place I’m. Like I stated, Apple has been unhelpful up to now. Their requirement to utterly eradicate third-party software program and attempt to reproduce the issue is sort of unrealistic. I can’t get any work completed with solely Apple software program. What number of days do I want to attend every time earlier than I can conclude that what I presently have put in just isn’t inflicting the bug? I don’t know.

I’m an skilled troubleshooter myself. I often (efficiently) assist different Mac customers repair their issues. However I’m at a loss right here. Is there actually no hope? I’ve tried the Apple Discussions discussion board (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255241383?web page=1), to no avail. So I’m now turning to this group of skilled Mac customers. Possibly somebody has some concepts.