Garbled / flickering terminal output
Escape-sequence handling corrupts the rendered TUI in some terminals.
829 issues · 148 open · 681 resolved (82%) · first seen Feb 26, 2025
First response · integration
What to do now
Most likely: A local integration or child process did not satisfy Claude Code’s expected contract.
- Isolate the failing MCP server, shell command or editor integration.
- Run that dependency directly and capture its exit code and stderr.
- Compare with a clean configuration before editing global settings.
These are conservative triage steps, not an official Anthropic fix. Use the issue and workaround evidence below before making a destructive configuration change.
Is this getting better or worse?
This class of problem is converging. 241 new reports in the last 90 days vs 340 in the 90 before — -29%. The open backlog peaked at 151 in 2026-07 and sits at 148 today.
Derived by counting each matching issue from its creation date until it closed. First-party
computation over the anthropics/claude-code tracker — the trend is not published
anywhere upstream.
Which builds report this
452 of these reports name the Claude Code build they were running, spanning 143 releases. Heaviest reporters:
- Claude Code v2.1.92
- Claude Code v2.0.76
- Claude Code v2.1.90
- Claude Code v2.1.220
- Claude Code v2.1.37
- Claude Code v2.1.119
- Claude Code v2.1.63
- Claude Code v2.0.73
Report volume, not a defect count: an issue can mention a build without that build having caused the failure. Versions come from the version string in the bug-report template, matched against real published tags.
Do these get fixed?
Median time to close is 12 days across 681 closures. Of the 681 closures with a recorded reason, 22% were closed as completed and 534 as not-planned or duplicate. The most recent completed fix landed in 2026-08.
Workarounds reported by the community
247 of these issues post a workaround someone says worked. The highest-engagement ones:
- [BUG] In-progress Call causes Screen Flickering
- @bcherny Not write tool, Claude created a here document to workaround not wanting to read the existing file. Not using verbose mode. --- │ Settings │ │ Configure Claude Code preferences │ │ │ │ ❯ Auto-compact true │ │ │…
Found in the thread of #769 · still open - Terminal Flickering
- In case someone is looking for a workaround, for some reason enabling "Maximize throughput at the cost of higher latency" option in iTerm2 (latest beta, not sure if that matters) stopped flickering on it's tracks, as soo…
Found in the thread of #1913 · still open - [BUG] Terminal rendering corruption in tmux - text overlaps and overwrites previous output
- …ut. The corruption persists until the session is restarted. Workaround Only reliable fix is or restarting the session. Related Issues - 769 — Screen flickering caused by full-buffer redraw on status indicator updates - 8…
Found in the description of #29937 · still open - [FEATURE] Video Input Support in Claude Code
- …of course, that's exactly what I've done also, but it is a workaround, not a real solution.
Found in the thread of #12676 · still open - [BUG] After the recent updates Claude Code jumps and loses track of scroll position in Terminal window
- ~~A workaround for iTerm2 until the issue is properly fixed in Claude Code:~~ ~~Settings - Advanced - Terminal - disable "App may turn on Focus Reporting"~~ UPD. It appears the issue wasn't reproducing for me in certain…
Found in the thread of #18299 · resolved
Excerpts are quoted from the linked issue so you can judge relevance before opening it. Threads that only ask for a workaround, or report that there is none, are excluded. These are community suggestions, not official guidance from Anthropic — read the full thread before applying one.
Matching issues 1–100
Ranked by community engagement (reactions weighted over comments). Listing the top 300 of 829 matches; the statistics above cover all 829.
- [BUG] In-progress Call causes Screen Flickering
- Terminal Flickering
- [BUG] Terminal rendering corruption in tmux - text overlaps and overwrites previous output
- [FEATURE] Video Input Support in Claude Code
- [BUG] After the recent updates Claude Code jumps and loses track of scroll position in Terminal window
- Excessive scroll events causing UI jitter in terminal multiplexers (4,000-6,700 scrolls/second)
- [Critical UX Regression] No way to access conversation history — alternate screen buffer kills all scrollback (v2.1.89+)
- [BUG] Intermittent terminal rendering corruption in VS Code (text selection forces a partial re-render)
- [BUG] Critical: Terminal Flickering Causes Complete VSCode Crashes on macOS
- v2.1.89 regression: flicker-free rendering destroys terminal scrollback by default
- Proposal: CustomPaneBackend protocol — decouple agent teams from tmux CLI to unblock Ghostty, WezTerm, Zellij, KILD, and remote deployments
- Version 2.0.73: Text rendering bug - lines dropped and garbled output
- Silent U+FFFD corruption in CJK model output due to TextDecoder missing `{ stream: true }` in SSE line decoder
- Agent teams should spawn in new tmux window, not split current pane
- [BUG] Windows: cmd (Command Prompt) rendering issue - text overlapping and garbled display since v2.1.3~v2.1.5
- [BUG] TUI character corruption after long sessions in VS Code integrated terminal (macOS, v2.1.141)
- Up/Down arrows jump to history instead of moving cursor through wrapped multi-line prompt input (all platforms; regressed ~2.1.15)
- Terminal scrollback not working in long sessions (alternate screen buffer)
- [BUG] "terminal scrolling infinite loop" or "uninterruptible high speed scrolling bug"
- [BUG] CC Terminal display corrupted with garbled characters throughout every single session
- [BUG] /context command doesn't load and causes screen flickers
- [BUG] Garbled/corrupted text rendering in terminal on macOS
- [BUG] Terminal display becomes garbled and unreadable after using Claude Code
- Terminal Flickering and State Reset in iTerm2 on macOS After Plan Approval
- [FEATURE] Petition to rename Claude Code to: Flicker Code, or Seizure Code
- Terminal strobing/flickering after returning from session selection screen (Windows Terminal)
- [FEATURE] Migrate checkpoint/rollback functionality to VSCode extension
- [Feature Request] Migrate Claude Code to Toad Terminal UI Framework
- [BUG] Windows Terminal input completely frozen starting from v2.1.30 (regression from v2.1.29)
- Agent view: high-rate terminal flicker in Windows Terminal (cmd.exe profile) while Claude is actively streaming
- OSC 52 clipboard writes should include PRIMARY selection (`p`) on Linux
- [BUG] Claude Code Extension causes nonstop IDE rendering glitch
- [BUG] Terminal re-renders entire conversation output repeatedly during sequential tool calls
- [Cowork] User-created skills stored in ephemeral session dirs — silently deleted on cleanup
- [BUG] /context command window flickers for 3-4 seconds then closes immediately
- Stray "call"/"court" token before tool calls; internal <invoke> XML printed as text instead of executing (Windows local + cloud Cowork)
- New renderer (CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1): Japanese text clipboard copy garbled on Windows (UTF-8 → CP932 mojibake via OSC 52)
- Background worker crash-loop on session start: "worker crashed (exit 1 — exit_with_message) — respawning…"
- [BUG] Tool-call results empty in live UI then flush late/out-of-order (Bash, Read, MCP, advisor) — macOS, Opus 4.8, parallel batches
- [BUG] TUI rendering corrupted in neovim's built-in terminal (macOS)
- Claude Code CLI Unusable: APIErrorterminated + Offline Flickering + Extreme Execution Delays
- TUI leaks repeated fragments of current screen into terminal scrollback during a session, with rendering artifacts
- [BUG] [CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER] Ctrl-G external editor: raw keycodes logged to terminal, input frozen after editor closes
- [BUG] Screen flickers during task tool work
- [BUG] Progressive text rendering corruption in long-running terminal sessions (macOS / Electron)
- [Bug] Chat display issues with excessive spacing and missing content after recent updates
- [BUG] Excessive flickering and scrolling.
- Erratic Task/Subagent Behavior in Plan/Act Workflow: Premature Edits, Nested Plans, and UI Flickering
- [Bug] NO_FLICKER mode garbles Japanese text output on Windows
- [BUG] 2.1.9 is unusable
- Add a visible scrollbar to the TUI for fine-grained scroll navigation
- [BUG] Screen flashes/flickers when loading past conversations via /resume
- [Bug] Excessive screen flickering and auto-scrolling during code edits impairs readability
- [BUG] Display is garbled when using agent view mode
- [BUG]TUI banner duplication stacking repeatedly on macOS Terminal.app (v2.1.104) — blocking daily work
- [BUG] Silent graceful exit during Write/Bash operations on Windows (NPM installation)
- Hook scripts fail on Windows: backslash paths misinterpreted by Git Bash
- [Bug] TUI rendering issues with garbled text and missing output visibility
- [BUG] add-dir command isn't working inside Claude Code
- [Ralph Wiggum Plugin] Windows 11 Compatibility Fixes for Stop Hook
- [Bug] Terminal flickering during verbose mode with large code updates
- CLI rendering: chat panel becomes unreadable / Unicode-mangled mid-session
- [BUG] Multi-line input causes scrambled rendering in input area
- [BUG] Fullscreen renderer corrupts the SYSTEM-WIDE macOS clipboard (copy/paste breaks in ALL apps), Terminal.app
- Session-summary text renders garbled (box-drawing/Cyrillic glyphs) in Cursor terminal — Claude Code 2.1.142/2.1.143
- [Bug] Garbled text output in CLI display
- [BUG] Pressing ctrl-r to see the output of the last command causes convulsive flickering in iTerm2
- Terminal UI Flickering in Zellij When Typing or Generating Response
- [Bug] Terminal text display corruption resolved by window resize
- [FEATURE] Richer TUI — sidebar with context/token usage, cleaner message layout
- [BUG] Claude Desktop Windows MSIX - screen flickering every ~15 seconds
- [BUG] Terminal UI flickering, overlapping output, and unstable auto-scrolling when using Claude Code in Android Studio
- [BUG] Character display corruption in Chinese text - blue "hB" artifacts appearing
- [BUG] Copy/paste completely broken on Ubuntu 24 with Ubuntu Terminal and Asbru - even in fullscreen mode
- [BUG] Fullscreen renderer corrupts pasted multibyte UTF-8 (Korean/CJK) on Windows — bytes decoded as Latin-1; default renderer unaffected
- [BUG] Claude in Chrome v1.0.70: Infinite OAuth retry loop on persistent 403 causes side panel flicker and forced logout
- [Bug] Multiple Claude Code instances spawning, causing terminal flicker and CPU exhaustion since v2.0.14
- VSCode extension: input box flickers and focus rapidly ping-pongs between multiple open session tabs
- [BUG] Desktop app: scroll wheel captured by Edit/Write diff cards even when diff has no overflow
- [Bug] Caps Lock key produces garbled characters "[57358u"
- SessionStart hooks should complete before TUI renders
- Flickering and then the Visual Studio code closes out unexpectedly and I have restart Visual Studio code again - THE FLICKERING IS REALLY BAD
- Tool call intermittently emitted as malformed plaintext ('court') instead of executing
- [Bug] Garbled characters (mojibake) in CLI output since v2.1.86
- CJK text corrupted (mojibake) when copying terminal output — no-flicker/fullscreen renderer is the cause; tui: "default" fixes it [macOS + OrbStack]
- VS Code extension voice dictation ignores `language` setting — French audio is decoded as English gibberish
- Terminal resize causes duplicated/corrupted output in tmux (regression in 2.1.116)
- [Bug] Claude 4.6 Opus generating corrupted/garbled output with invalid tokens
- Scroll region rendering broken in SwiftTerm after recent flickering fix
- Parallel Task agents intermittently lose output content
- [Bug] Terminal flicker on character input during typing
- [BUG] TUI renders garbled inside tmux since 2.1.200 (last-good 2.1.199) — only repaints on forced redraw
- [BUG] Bash and Read tool outputs arriving one turn late
- Multi-line prompt renders incorrectly after terminal resize; Ctrl+L fixes it
- [BUG] CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER=1 produces weird rendering artifacts with zellij
- [Bug] Unicode characters render as mojibake on Windows terminals
- Severe screen flickering in VS Code/Cursor integrated terminal on Windows
- [Bug] Terminal output flickering/jumping on macOS across IDE and native terminals
- [Bug] Fullscreen TUI mode breaks clipboard and mouse text selection without visible escape hatch
- 2.1.154 regression: bridge/remote-control session replay re-sends persisted (empty-text, signed) thinking blocks -> 400 'thinking blocks cannot be modified', session unrecoverable