Terminal rendering corruption on macOS Apple Silicon - GPU acceleration workaround ineffective

[TakumiOkayasu]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

• VS Code Version: 1.108.1 (arm64)
• OS Version: macOS 26.3 (Build 25D770870v) - MacBook Air, Apple M1, 16GB RAM

Note

I'm a Japanese developer and English is not my first language. I created this report with the help of AI (Claude) to ensure clarity. Please let me know if anything is unclear.

Related Issue

This is a follow-up to #284827, which is currently closed. I'm opening a new issue as I cannot reopen the previous one.

Summary

Terminal rendering corruption occurs on macOS with Apple Silicon. The "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration": "auto" workaround that helped on Windows has no effect on macOS.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Use VS Code integrated terminal on macOS with Apple M1
2. Run various commands (the issue occurs intermittently)
3. Terminal display becomes corrupted/garbled (similar to GPU "device lost" on Windows)

Workaround Attempted

On Windows, setting "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration": "auto" in settings.json helped reduce the frequency of this issue.

However, this setting has no effect on macOS - the corruption continues to occur.

Screenshots

[fewtarius]

I have this issue as well, terminal is basically unusable:

> - Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- InspE.m- Inspired la- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBBli- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB-er- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBB- Inspired by PhotonBBtation: Updated README with slate description"
[photon-code 0c3a286] feat(ui): add slate color style - professional blue/grey retro theme

Happy to provide data if it helps.

[TakumiOkayasu]

Thank you for confirming! It's helpful to know I'm not the only one experiencing this.

I've noticed the issue occurs intermittently and is difficult to reproduce consistently. On Windows, setting "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration": "auto" reduced the frequency, but this workaround has no effect on macOS.

If you find any patterns or triggers, please share them here.

[TakumiOkayasu]

Additional Finding: PowerShell vs Git Bash Comparison on Windows

Environment

• OS: Windows (with WSL2 Ubuntu-24.04)
• PowerShell: 7.5.4
• Git Bash: GNU bash 5.2.37(1)-release (x86_64-pc-msys)

Observation

• Git Bash: Layout corruption does NOT occur.
• PowerShell: Layout corruption occurs frequently (see attached screenshots).

Screenshots

• powershell_1.png - powershell_4.png: Terminal corruption in PowerShell
• gitbash.png: Normal rendering in Git Bash

Note on Garbled Characters

Some garbled text in the screenshots (e.g., 0e0[n00000000000000000000000) appears to be related to Shift-JIS encoding issues with Japanese text. This is separate from the layout corruption itself.

Terminal-related Settings

[
  {
    "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "'MonaspiceKr Nerd Font Propo', Mint-Mono, 'Source Han Code JP', monospace"
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.letterSpacing": 2
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.mouseWheelZoom": true
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.copyOnSelection": true
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.cursorBlinking": true
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.ignoreBracketedPasteMode": true
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.enablePersistentSessions": false
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.allowChords": false
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "bash"
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.osx": "zsh"
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "PowerShell"
  },
  {
    "accessibility.verbosity.terminal": false
  },
  {
    "accessibility.signals.terminalQuickFix": {
      "sound": "off",
      "announcement": "off"
    }
  },
  {
    "accessibility.signals.terminalCommandFailed": {
      "sound": "off",
      "announcement": "off"
    }
  },
  {
    "accessibility.signals.terminalBell": {
      "sound": "off",
      "announcement": "off"
    }
  },
  {
    "terminal.integrated.initialHint": false
  }
]

[bearice]

I'm experiencing the same issue. I found a temporary workaround: changing the terminal font in settings triggers a re-render, then changing it back seems to fix the problem for a while.

[stillhart]

Same here on MacOS 26.4

[cfloressuazo]

Same here on macOS 15.4 (M4). Turning terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration to "off" fixes it. Setting it back to "auto" causes the glitches to return every now and then.