You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Vertical lines, background apps often show through on iMac screen (late 2012)

Hi there, an issue I've been having for over a year now, mostly on, sometimes off, is the appearance of subtle but disatracting lines and background app windows showing through foreground apps on my screen. This is especially prominent while watching videos or viewing darker-scale images full-screen.


I would assume it was just my monitor starting to go (it is almost seven years old) but the issue sometimes resides, but not reliably, after a restart or just at random.


What's interesting is, when I do a screengrab (Cmd+shift+4 style) the issue is not on the image. That means the screenshot is not truly grabbing what is reflected on the monitor, as the user sees it. I don't want to get to deep into that, but basically it's very hard to show the issue to anyone not in the room. The best I can do is a cameraphone snap, which always look awful.


In the one attached you can see the shadow of a Firefox address bar, showing through a video (Elmedia player here, but it doesn't matter) that I had full-screened. You can also see the vertical lines here, though it's somewhat obscured by the poor quality of a monitor pic.




In the past people have referred me to the "transparency" settings for mac OS, but this is not the issue. nor is it things left open that get burned into the screen. Whatever I have in the background presently, is what shows through -- plus I use a screensaver and have my monitor set to shut off after five minutes of non use. Any ideas?



Deets if needed:

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)

3.2 GHz Intel Core i5

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2 GB

MacOS Mojave: 10.14.6 (18G103)


iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 14, 2019 10:53 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 14, 2019 11:28 AM

Please reset the NVRAM per the directions in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063 . However, if the lines persist then you are likely looking a GPU failure.

Similar questions

2 replies

Vertical lines, background apps often show through on iMac screen (late 2012)

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.