M2 Mac / Ventura 13.0: PsychoPy window opens but no Text/Textbox/Polygon is drawn, Esc does not respond

Builder
1

M2 MacBook, macOS Ventura 13.0, PsychoPy 2026.2.3 (Python 3.11; also tried 3.10).

Experiment window opens and the background colour changes correctly, but no components appear — I tried Text, Textbox, and a Polygon. Esc also does not close the experiment, so I have to force quit.

If “Measure frame rate” is enabled, PsychoPy gets stuck on “Attempting to measure frame rate of screen…”. Disabling it lets the window open, but stimuli still do not appear.

I’ve already tried reinstalling PsychoPy, resetting .psychopy3, changing keyboard backend, checking Accessibility/Input Monitoring permissions, and creating a completely fresh experiment.

Could this be a macOS/PsychoPy compatibility issue, or is there another setting I should check before updating macOS?

2

It sounds like something at the very start of the experiment is getting stuck in a loop; is there anything saved in lastAppLoad.log in the .psychopy3 folder after force quitting?

3

Yes. After force quitting, last_app_load.log contains the experiment launch and two monitor calibration messages, but nothing else is logged before the process is terminated. The last lines are:



28.9180 INFO Loaded monitor calibration from ['2026_09_15 13:56']
28.9552 INFO Loaded monitor calibration from ['2026_09_15 13:56']
####### Experiment ended with exit code -15 [pid:43485] ########

So it seems to hang silently after startup; there is no exception or error recorded before I force quit.

4

Strange, it’s exit code -15 too which means it exited by being force quitted (i.e. didn’t fail before you killed it). Could you share your experiment?

5

Sure, I’ve attached the .psyexp file (hello text test). Just to add: this is not limited to this particular file, the same happened with every simple demo test experiment I’ve tried to create

hello_test.psyexp (7.1 KB)

6

That makes sense, your experiment runs fine for me. If this is persistent across experiments and config, I would guess you’re right that it’s an OS issue. The fact that it doesn’t close after 5s (when the text should finish) also suggests that something has frozen up rather than the stimuli simply not being drawn.