Menu bar and right-click menu blank So after working on my Macbook for a while. Menus will start blanking out. 



Right click on Chrome in dock:



Top menu bar totally blank:



Right click on desktop: 



Clicking the black Apple icon in the top left corner of menu bar:



Any idea what's causing it? I have to reboot or log out each time, which is no easy task given menus are blank.
First, the shortcut Shift - Command - Q will log you out and secondly, what a hassle when the display glitches or ghosts like that. 


Start keeping a log 


what time does this start and when was the Machine last restarted?
does logging out and logging back in fix it temporarily?
what apps do you run that correlate with this failure?

While you are logging to see if there are patterns, here’s how to triage specifically for the location of the fault:


I would start with a new user account to be sure this isn’t a system bug. While you are in the second user, check that your backup is current or set one up and let it finish. Once you’re sure it’s not the system, you can decide to start cleaning your preferences for your user or erase your user and restore files manually or with Migration Assistant to bring your user back from the backup.  

I would try an erase install and restore from backup first before troubleshooting user preferences or manual restore of files. That’s much quicker and I have good success with it cleanuping up preference rot (assuming that’s what is causing this). The bonus to this is it also clears up system corruption. Two birds, one stone, so to speak. 

Also, delete any apps you don’t need or can easily reinstall - the app data is left around and the fewer items to triage, the faster you will narrow down what’s causing this. 


Good luck!




Some shots in the dark:
- uninstall Chrome for a while
- older versions of Microsoft Remote Desktop were reported to cause this - that should be easy to isolate if so

This is something quite a few have reported and my hunch is Apple probably doesn’t run the setup and app usage in their testing labs that’s likely to reproduce and fix this. Clearly this is a pretty severe visual bug triggered with some amount of common tasks.