Color Flicker in Illustrator

[thompsonryan]

I'm experiencing an issue in Illustrator where the colors on screen slightly flicker or shift in value. It is especially noticeable on bright, saturated color. It's a little difficult to explain but the video will show what I'm seeing. This is only happening in Illustrator and it doesn't happen all the time. The screen recording is from my Macbook Pro.

Could this be a hardware issue?

My setup:
2019 Macbook Pro
macOS Catalina 10.15.7
Adobe Illustrator 25.1

[S_Gans · Accepted solution]

This COULD (but shouldn't) be an issue with your graphics card. It's possible your GPU is creating the problem - although I have to imagine, it's within Adobe specifications. Please turn off the GPU functions at Preferences> Performance, and see if that resolves the issue. If so, maybe talk to Apple about this, as the GPU on that model should be sufficient. 

[thompsonryan]

Thanks for shedding some light on this. It looks like the GPU setting is the culprit. However, the problem with the flicker only happens occasionaly. Basically turning off the GPU setting and then turning it back on seems to help stablize it. I'm going to see what Apple may have to say as well. I've also had GPU issues with Photoshop.

[Jeroen5C2D]

Exactly the same problem, looks like this has not been solved yet (MacBook Air (M1, 2020)) turning off CPU in settings solved the matter.

[bgfrancey]

Did you have any response from Apple? I'm having the same issue and turning off GPU worked fine. However, AI is now sluggishly slow moving around artboards.

[Jeroen5C2D]

No I haven’t had contact with Apple about this - in my case turning the GPU toggle off and later on again fixed the issue temporary (still annoying, and I hope it will be fixed in coming updates).

[Lukas5EC7]

Running a 2019 Mac Book Pro and having the same issues. It seems turning off the GPU functions have solved the issue.