A VZMacGraphicsDisplayConfiguration with a large resolution causes macOS Ventura to incorrectly draw its menu bar items.

Filed as rdar://FB11975037

When macOS Ventura is run as a guest OS within the virtualization framework, the main menu bar items will not be displayed correctly if VZMacGraphicsDisplayConfiguration defines a large resolution.

The menu bar titles appear to be using the same color as the menu bar itself. When the Appearance is set to Light, the menu bar items are effectively invisible. When the Appearance is set to Dark, the menu bar items are drawn in what looks like a disabled state.

This only affects the menu bar item titles on the left-hand side. The date-time and menu bar icons on the right side are always displayed in the correct color.

This appears to be a regression in macOS Ventura as this issue is not present in macOS 12 running as a guest.

This bug can be easily reproduced using Apple's own Virtualization sample code titled: "Running macOS in a Virtual Machine on Apple Silicon Macs"

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Follow the sample code instructions for building and installing a VM.bundle.

  2. Before running 'macOSVirtualMachineSampleApp', change the VZMacGraphicsDisplayConfiguration to use:

    • width = 5120,
    • height = 2880,
    • ppi = 144.
  3. Run 'macOSVirtualMachineSampleApp' and notice that the menu bar titles on the left side of the screen are not correctly drawn in the guest instance.

This has been tested on:

  • Host: macOS 13.1
  • Guest: macOS 13.x (All versions)
  • Hardware: MBP 14" M1 Pro 32GB/2TB

Is there anything that can be done to resolve this issue?

Thank you for filing a bug report about the issue. This will need to be investigated.

This issue is still present in 13.5

Still there in 13.6.5, I wanted to debug some code in Ventura and fired up a VM.

Still there in 13.6.5

Yep. That matches my reading of kennyc’s bug (FB11975037).

We believe we know what’s causing this problem, but I’ve no info to share as to when a fix will ship.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

A VZMacGraphicsDisplayConfiguration with a large resolution causes macOS Ventura to incorrectly draw its menu bar items.
 
 
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