Electron: macOS High Sierra: parts of the window not rendering

[bpasero]

• Electron version: 1.7.x
• Operating system: macOS High Sierra

Expected behavior

The window contents should draw normally.

Actual behavior

Parts of the window are not drawn correctly.

How to reproduce

We got reports from users on macOS high sierra that see major UI paint issues such as:

or

So far it is not yet clear why these users are impacted. The issue does not reproduce for everyone on macOS High Sierra. It also seems to impact other Electron apps like Slack (@felixrieseberg see https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/35527#issuecomment-334772295) so I am filing this issue here to start a thread on how to deal with this issue.

Refs: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/35527

[NKjoep]

I can say it happens to me everytime I drag-resize the electron-like windows.

My system specs:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2,4 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB - Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

[alexeykuzmin]

@bpasero Does it happen with the Electron 1.8.1 too?

[felixrieseberg]

Confirmed that we're having issues with 1.7.x for sure – we'll know soon(ish) whether or not it happens with 1.8, too.

[Thomas101]

We've also had users reporting this issue (https://github.com/wavebox/waveboxapp/issues/395).

Seems to be focused only around macs with two GPU's. We've had reports on...

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB - Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB - Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB



md5-4f1856d7c0f71047f12e2fb1f57e09a7



MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB - Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

Disabling GPU acceleration has worked for some users so definitely points to an issue around that.
We've been trying to get together a test-case we can reproduce the issue on but to no avail.

In terms of versions, we've only had reports for 1.7.x, but will be releasing a 1.8.1 version shortly so will report back on feedback in case that helps anyone.

I've also managed to get my hands on 2012 mac for testing, but I haven't seen the issue arise on that yet. If that changes, I'll post back Seeing the same behaviour on the 2012 mac too

[Thomas101]

Updated the previous comment, issue does occur on our 2012 model too. I've also just run a build with 1.8.1 and unfortunately we see the same behaviour

[bmherold]

Seeing this regularly on my 2014 model as well.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB - Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[eppsilon]

A coworker and I are also experiencing this issue with one of the models listed:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB - Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

(Seems identical to the 2.3 GHz model GPU-wise. The model ID is MacBookPro11,3.)

[joelday]

I filed this earlier today: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=773705

Appears to be the same issue.

[raptor235]

I've been having issues all week... Atom has been absolutely brutal...

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB
and
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

I'm also not sure if it's electron related but I've seen corruption on Chrome as well.

[armincifuentes]

Experiencing this same issue with both Atom 1.21.0 and VS Code 1.17.1

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

• 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
• Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

I'm available to run tests and provide further info, if it helps.

[tonghuashuo]

Same here. Frequently with all electron apps & occasionally with Chrome.

Macbook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)

• 2.3GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536MB

[dengyaolong]

+1

[olivierkaisin]

Same here (mostly noticed on VS Code 1.17.1).

Minimizing and then maximizing the window seems to help fixing the render problem temporarily.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

• 2,8 GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
• Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[psymeon]

Same for me here. My system specs are:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2,4 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

Disabling gpu acceleration as mentioned by @Thomas101 (via the --disable-gpu option when launching the apps from the terminal) seems to be a temporary solution, but it also affects the performance of graphics-heavy apps (or websites in Chrome).

[mofux]

I'm also affected.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

I can see the same rendering issues in Chrome (61.0.3163.100).
It also happens with Automatic graphics switching setting in OSX disabled.

[raptor235]

Is there any open tickets for this with Chrome? seems like a wide scale
issue but not sure if the Chrome team or Electron team is aware.

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 4:56 AM Thomas Zilz [e-mail]
wrote:

I'm also affected.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

I can see the same rendering issues in Chrome (61.0.3163.100).

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[mofux]

There seems to be an open Chromium issue filed here:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=773705

[zzswang]

same problem

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB

seems related to Nvidia

another mbp with ATI is working well with exactly same softwares and os. (Time Machine recovery)

[jhogervorst]

Same issue here, with Visual Studio Code and Slack. Resizing the affected window sometimes seems to fix the issue for me.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB - Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

I also experience freezes of the window server on High Sierra with this Mac, after which I have to force shutdown the machine. This keeps happening every few days, even after a clean reinstall. So there’s probably something wrong with the video drivers, I guess.

[jarnovanrhijn]

Updating, disabeling or removing some plugins seems to have fixed it for me.. not sure if and which plugin was the problem tho.

[RMGarrett]

Same issue for me on gitkraken and VSCode, minimizing and reopening seem to fix the issue.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB - Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

[bpasero]

Fyi it looks like a patch landed in Chrome nightly to address this: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/bb354ab52392a11204cd3fc2d443d6ba5cbb87ed%5E%21/#F0

/cc @MarshallOfSound @cifratila

[MarshallOfSound]

@bpasero Do you have a device you can use to test a patch? I'm happy to pull that patch into libcc so we can test it but I don't have an affected device

[raptor235]

There is a fix waiting to be merged in... big discussion here...

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=773705

It's a fix but it might cause other performance issues... so worth giving a try till Apple fixes the drives... not sure how we would go about submitting this to apple...

If you're experiencing this issue, can you please open "about:flags" and find the entry labeled "Gpu Rasterization" and try setting this to "disabled". This may address the issue, but it would be great to confirm that this fixes it for everyone.

[bpasero]

@MarshallOfSound unfortunately not, but a lot of users that I can give a build to test that can tell me if its fixed. I will get this during this week.

[Thomas101]

@MarshallOfSound I've got a device I can test with if it helps

[alecazam]

If you switch to the Intel part instead of Nvidia that is another possible workaround. We assume Apple engineering doesn’t use any machines from 2013 or older. AMD and Intel drivers work better. Native OpenGL, animated GIF, and video are alll affected on Nvidia parts on High Sierra.

[skllcrn]

Looks like Electron is applying a quick fix borrowed from Chrome, blacklisting certain GPU features. Not a permanent solution, but based on the conversations on the Chromium bug tracker work from NVIDIA and/or Apple is needed.

https://github.com/electron/libchromiumcontent/pull/379
https://github.com/electron/libchromiumcontent/pull/382

https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/10898

[raptor235]

I've submitted a bug report to apple.. problem id 35284875 not sure if they'll ever get to it... if they don't I guess a downgrade back to sierra will be required... I can't put up with this much longer.

[mofux]

Was anybody able to reproduce this issue on the just released MacOS 10.13.1 update?

[skllcrn]

@mofux Yes.

[dafergu2]

I'm seeing massive graphics issues myself. I'm on a MBP Early 2013 with a brand new logic board due to memory issues. I was worried that there was a graphics issue since the testing tool the shop has from Apple is not compatible with apfs yet. Seeing this made me think it may be a driver issue. I'm also seeing kernel panics and lockups on a fresh install of High Sierra. I'm currently testing using the Nvidia Web Driver to see if that alleviates the problem.

[dafergu2]

It looks like the NVidia driver stopped the gpu kernel panics and restarts, but I still saw massive issues with apps failing to start eventually. It started occurring when I loaded as many electron apps as I could. In the process of reverting to Sierra to see if that fixes it.

[rorz]

So crazy that 10.13 has such widespread issues with GPU-acceleration on electron apps.

Slack, Atom, Spotify, are all periodically being rendered (no pun intended) useless and it is driving me mad that this was not tested in a GM (first update) release!

[raptor235]

I'm losing my mind with this... trying to figure out if going back to Sierra would fix this... anyone try it?

[ajsharp]

A couple of notes:

• Using the latest Chrome Canary (64.0.3262.0), this seems to be fixed. Good for browsing, not much help to the native apps that rely on electron.
• In the meantime, you can use https://gfx.io/ to manually switch off the nvidia card to the system graphics card. Unfortunately you still have to use the nvidia card when connected to an external display.

Hopefully the chromium/electron patch can be quickly applied to the numerous apps that use it.

[mint5auce]

I've been seeing the same issues in Chrome (62.0.3202.89) and Slack (2.8.2) on macOS 10.13.1, MacBook Pro (Mid 2012).

[dafergu2]

Since I had all of this trouble, I've had to have my logic board replaced twice and my LCD replaced. I downgraded to Sierra and all seems to be okay now at this point. I'm wondering if the Nvidia drivers for High Sierra would fix things at this point for others. They seemed to improve things a lot for me but I also ended up having a good amount of hardware issues (bad memory, bad gpu, and a bad display). Has anyone else tried the Nvidia drivers?

[rorz]

Trying the Nvidia drivers now... Too soon to report anything, but Atom did seem to run more smoothly on boot (had a lot of issues with scrolling this past month).

For os13.1:
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126538/en-us

Update: A little sluggish on boot for Atom (slows down open electron apps), but no artefacting yet, and it does pick up again :) ... Seems like this driver is doing something right.

[jgerry]

@rorz What hardware are you using that you see this issue on? And can you keep us updated on your results with these new drivers? I had to roll back my 2013 Retina MBP to Sierra after experiencing these issues on High Sierra. I'd like to try again but I'm definitely looking for some validation from others before I try again.

[rorz]

@jgerry — Hope this helps:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

There was no additional set-up to installing the driver I linked to above — just a restart. It gives you the option to revert to the system driver as well if something untoward happens.

Today's been a good day for High Sierra — still no graphics issues, only slight lag (but this is probably CPU playing catch-up) on Atom. The lag beforehand (and glitching) made it unusable.

I think the main contributing factor to my graphics woes has been using an external display, as this forces the discrete GPU into use; all the above applies to the same setup w/ display.

Sorry that you had to roll back, that's a bummer. I wish I'd have stayed on El Capitan, really.

[whmountains]

This has been fixed (or at least patched) in the latest Chromium.

[skllcrn]

I'm not sure that's accurate @whmountains. From my talks with one of the Google engineers working on the issue, disabling GPU rasterisation seemed to have a positive effect for some, and disabling accelerated 2D canvas might also. However, disabling the latter resulted in "severe performance issues on common sites". In other words they settled on the lesser evil; visual corruption, rather than it not working at all. From what I understand this issue is blocked until NVIDIA fix the driver and Apple distributes it.

To test, can you go to https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/sdk/tests/deqp/functional/gles3/negativeshaderapi.html?webglVersion=2&quiet=0 and run the test a couple of times? Does WebGL crash?

You can also open Console.app and run https://web.basemark.com/run/tests/30/graphics_suite/webgl_102_test/, you should see kernel panics and massive performance drops.

Finally, you should still see flickering/corruption on http://webglsamples.org/multiple-views/multiple-views.html

[losbeekos]

My problems have been solved by installing the same driver as @rorz. Indeed, just a slight lag here and there but no more rendering issues. I've got the exact same hardware as @rorz btw.

[gochev]

The issue is with NVIDIA indeed.. using the web driver http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/324195-nvidia-web-driver-updates-for-macos-high-sierra-update-11012017/ everything works HOWEVER with the web driver I cannot use external display... maybe I just didnt do everything from the installation guide(s) but at least it works on the macbook perfectly :)

Hope Apple will release a new drivers but they are lazy and do not care about Nvidia anymore, so I do not think so :D

[ThadeuLuz]

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)
2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB

Using web drivers and Franz is still glitchy. :/
External display works just fine for me.

[zhenyulin]

I'm on

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)
2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB

and having similar issues.

Suspect it was related to CUDA compatibility - Update Required error.

Found a solution here:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1025945/mac-cuda-9-0-driver-fully-compatible-with-macos-high-sierra-10-13-error-quot-update-required-quot-solved-/

But not sure if it is actually relevant/reliable?

[skllcrn]

The CUDA "updated required" bug is completely unrelated, you can just ignore it @zhenyulin.

[skllcrn]

Apple indicated that the issue might be fixed on the latest macOS 10.13.2 beta. There was also a recent NVIDIA driver update, but that probably hasn't landed on the macOS beta yet, and didn't have any effect on the issue for me in any case. Has anyone tested the latest macOS beta?

[rafaelncarvalho]

@skllcrn On beta 5 I have seen improvements, my Mac stopped overheating and worked normally. But on beta 6 it went back overheating and glitches

[Firefishy]

OSX 10.13.x is the issue. This issue is not caused by Electron.

[Firefishy]

Haven't seen to happen again in OSX 10.13.2 (yet).

[dafergu2]

@Firefishy what hardware are you using? I'm debating on updating to 10.13.2 from 10.12.x on my early 2013 MBP with discrete graphics.

Also, have you turned on the discrete graphics manually so that it isn't using the lower powered GPU?

[Firefishy]

@dafergu2 MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1 GB + Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB. Only the Discreet GPU is used because I use an Apple Thunderbolt Display.

[ytilis]

I began running into this issue on macOS Sierra v10.12.6, with Slack and Visual Studio Code. Hardware is MBP Retina 15-inch, Mid-2015.

Resetting the NVRAM seems to have cleared it up, at least for now:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

[alexeykuzmin]

@ytilis Electron version?

[rorz]

Still messing up... With either native or beta drivers. I would advise people who still experience this issue to file radars until Apple gives this issue proper notice.

[SimonWaters]

We haven't seen these issues in Slack for a while, so I suspect that Apple are right, in that at least one issue with these symptoms is fixed before 10.13.3

[ytilis]

@alexeykuzmin This was over a week ago now so I can't guarantee that the current versions I had are the same as what I have now, and unfortunately I didn't think to check the versions at the time.

Also, is there a way to check which version of Electron is used by a compiled application?

My current versions are:
VSCode: 1.19.3 (1.19.3)
Slack: 3.0.5

I'm fairly sure I was on the latest versions available at the time I made my comment 9 days ago.

[GregYeo]

VSCode use electron and VSCode still use electron 1.7.0

• https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/package.json#L66

If https://github.com/electron/mksnapshot/pull/6 is merged, VSCode might fix it.
(Of course, VSCode also should update their package.json for it)
Slack is also based on electron but i'm not sure they are using mksnapshot.

[GregYeo]

Temporary solution until fixing if you got rendering performance trouble electron + nvidia graphic

1. Add alias for the application in your shell profile ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc

# For Visual Studio Code
alias code="/Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron --disable-gpu"
# For Slack
alias slack="/Applications/Slack.app/Contents/MacOS/Slack --disable-gpu"

1. Open terminal and run command

code&
slack&

It's done.

You might make automation of MAC but you can just start it by terminal without extra job because of temporary.

[SuperBarracuda]

Issue went away in 10.13.2 for me, believe Apple updated the Nvidia graphics drivers in that release.

[blahdy]

so this is what made whatsapp unusable on high sierra. also nvidia graphics here. can confirm --disable-gpu resolves the issue. damn, it's been stuttering like hell for half a year now. really grown into telegram because of this

[jelling]

Same issue here and it effects nearly every app I use on a daily basis including VSCode, Slack, Spotify, Trello, Postman. It's most noticeable when moving between spaces; a definite lag.

Mac OS 10.3.3
Hardware: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[drewlustro]

Same issue affecting me.

Launching Visual Studio Code with --disable-gpu resolves the issue, but with other artifacts and poorer performance.

[jarek-foksa]

My Electron 2.0.2 app is affected by a very similar graphical glitch on at least one device. The app window initially renders fine, but it gets blank after opening a popover dialog. The renderer process keeps responding to keyboard events. The issue does not occur when --disable-gpu flag is used.

[r-souza]

About the VSCode, I had the same issue this week and solved it by changing the following "User Setting":

"terminal.integrated.rendererType"

I've changed it to use "dom" instead "canvas" and the terminal come back working normally.

[bpasero]

@rodrigoevildead can I ask: does it also reproduce for you with VSCode insiders, where we recently switched to use Electron 2.0.7?

[r-souza]

@bpasero I tried now and the problem continues the same way.

Code - Insiders - Version 1.27.0-insider (1.27.0-insider)
fd610b4b6ab8d4735a4d84a2b59206ad3a9c8099

[sofianguy]

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Electron better.

The version of Electron you reported this on has been superseded by newer releases.

If you're still experiencing this issue in Electron v4.2.x or later, please add a comment specifying the version you're testing with and any other new information that a maintainer trying to reproduce the issue should know.

I'm setting the blocked/need-info label for the above reasons. This issue will be closed 7 days from now if there is no response.

Thanks in advance! Your help is appreciated.

[bpasero]

Yeah I think we no longer hit this.