Screen flickers when clicking on Mac

[Torgy]

Hey all,

Hoping someone can give me a pointer. I have a MacBook Pro 14 and am using NoMachine to work on it remotely. Everything works fine if the lid is up but if I put the lid down, every time I click or type, the screen flickers. I’ve tried a few suggestions from other Mac flickering threads like turning off auto brightness but haven’t had any luck. Note, if I connect this to a monitor, the flickering does not occur. Unfortunately, that is not a long-term convenient option as this laptop is moved all around by several household members and a HDMI cable/monitor/fake dongle are not always available.

If folks have any ideas to try out, please let me know.

I am running the following free version of NoMachine:

NoMachine Host: 8.0.168 (2021 MacBook Pro 14 – MacOS Monterey 12.6)

NoMachine Client: 8.0.168 (2020 Surface Laptop 3 – Windows 11 2262.586)

 

Thanks much.

[Britgirl]

First let’s rule out that it’s not being caused by a setting in NoMachine. Could you could try turning off screen blanking in the NoMachine server settings on the Macbook if it is enabled? Does that make the flickering stop in the NoMachine player window?

If that doesn’t help, then you should bear in mind that closing the lid on Macbooks switches the GPU off as a rule and AFAWK there isn’t a system configuration to keep the mac GPU on with the lid closed.

[Torgy]

Thanks! Just to follow-up here. I did test this by turning off screen blanking as well as several other settings including setting Performance FPS and turning off notifications. None seemed to resolve the issue. I have temporarily worked around the issue by plugging it into a TV when it is not in active use. That seems to allow for a perfect connection. No flickering and no screen blanking. While this probably isn’t going to work long-term, it does help for the immediate future.

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