Black boxes instead of letters in TUI in VSCode builtin terminal #32414

Activity

1. github-actions

   assigned

   simonklee

   on Jun 15, 2026
2. Nicolas-Gth commented on Jun 16, 2026

   

   Nicolas-Gth

   on Jun 16, 2026

   Last edited by Nicolas-Gth

   More actions

   Getting the same bug (using Opencode 1.17.7 from Brew on Bazzite) on VSCode terminal. It gets progressively worse and I have to restart VSCode for it to display correctly again.

   
3. drsmile1001 commented on Jun 17, 2026

   

   drsmile1001

   on Jun 17, 2026

   More actions

   Upstream VS Code / xterm.js root cause found

   After a full VS Code version bisection, this issue has been identified as an upstream bug in the VS Code integrated terminal's underlying xterm.js WebGL renderer. It is not an opencode-specific problem.

   Bisection results

   • VS Code 1.122.1 (May 28) with xterm.js 6.1.0-beta.213 -> normal
   • VS Code 1.123.2 (Jun 3) with xterm.js 6.1.0-beta.220 (includes Fix webgl rendering corruption from atlas page merges xtermjs/xterm.js#5883 "Fix webgl rendering corruption from atlas page merges") -> black boxes appear
   • VS Code 1.124.2 (Jun 10) with xterm.js 6.1.0-beta.220 -> black boxes persist

   Root cause

   WebGL glyph atlas cells render as solid black rectangles due to corruption in the renderer's texture atlas. The issue manifests on Linux with Mesa + Wayland + the default ANGLE OpenGL ES backend. Affected GPUs include both AMD Radeon (Mesa radeonsi) and Intel integrated graphics. The DOM renderer, ANGLE Vulkan backend, and ANGLE SwiftShader backend are all unaffected.

   Upstream VS Code tracking

   • Terminal: WebGL renderer corrupts glyph-atlas cells (solid black boxes) on ANGLE GLES backend (Mesa radeonsi); Vulkan & software backends fine microsoft/vscode#321007 (closed as duplicate) - "Terminal: WebGL renderer corrupts glyph-atlas cells on ANGLE GLES backend (Mesa radeonsi)"
   • Terminal font rendering microsoft/vscode#320367 (fixed) - "Terminal font rendering"
   • The fix: xterm@6.1.0-beta.285 microsoft/vscode#320646 - bumps xterm.js from 6.1.0-beta.220 to 6.1.0-beta.285, which picks up upstream terminal font rendering fixes. Merged Jun 9, scheduled for VS Code 1.125.0.

   Temporary workarounds

   • Set "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration": "off" to use the DOM renderer instead of WebGL.
   • Or launch VS Code with --use-angle=vulkan --enable-features=Vulkan to bypass the GLES backend.

   Status

   The fix is already available in VS Code Insiders 1.125.0 and will ship in the next Stable release.

   👍React with 👍3Reacted by Nico, ThThoma and Stefan Hoffmann
4. github-actions commented on Aug 17, 2026

   

   github-actionsBot

   on Aug 17, 2026 – with GitHub Actions

   Contributor

   More actions

   To stay organized issues are automatically closed after 60 days of no activity. If the issue is still relevant please open a new one.
5. github-actions

   closed this as not plannedon Aug 17, 2026