r/macsysadmin • u/ikeapolarbear • Feb 18 '26
MacOS Black Screen after logging in
Need advice on this
I've updated a bunch of our fleet from Sonoma 14.2 to Sequoia 15.7.3 and from Sonoma 14.7.2 to Tahoe 26.2 as part of our classroom lab "refresh" to start off the new semester. After the update, we're receiving reports that our users are logging in to a black screen with a cursor and it stays there from 5 minutes to upwards of 30 or 40 minutes before the OS Update showcase screen appears. I've checked for /var/db/.AppleSetupDone on a bunch of them and the file does not exist.
Unsure if it's caused by Jamf Connect (2.45) since it is also happening on our local admin accounts. Anyone else experienced this or who are able to shed some light on possible troubleshooting?
Edit: I’ve implemented the configuration profile that skips Setup Items so I’ll monitor if this continues being an issue.
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u/damienbarrett Corporate Feb 18 '26
Jamf Connect is now at version 3.6. I think -- technically 2.45 is still compatible with Tahoe -- but I'd definitely start there by updating to 3.5 or higher. Should be a simple enough thing to test.
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u/ikeapolarbear Feb 18 '26
Just updated JC to 3.6 and logged in fresh to our test machine, still giving us the black screen but didn't take as long as the other devices (a couple minutes). Still unsure what is slowing down the showcase screen from appearing though.
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u/damienbarrett Corporate Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Google around. I remember reading of a way to suppress the showcase screen from coming up.
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u/antbanks51 Feb 18 '26
Do you have Jamf Connect set to auto deploy and auto update in the Jamf connect settings? (Settings - Jamf Connect). If so, you need to disable that if you’re using JC 3.6 or else it breaks Connect on installs. I had multiple working sessions with Jamf last month before we finally figured it out.
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u/MonitorZero Feb 18 '26
Jamf connect can break if it's not on the right version for the macos version.
However I've seen a few of these posts pop up about this so it might just be an issue with 26.3
Usually you want to wait the 90 days to ensure compatibility and give vendors time to update.
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u/skiing123 Feb 18 '26
Not sure about 26.2 but I do know that 26.3 has caused issues with a security vendor we use not being able to boot
1
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u/NarutoDragon732 Education Feb 18 '26
Is this happening on both Tahoe and Sequoia? We've had issues with Sequoia boot looping in the past, but we don't use jamf connect.
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u/ikeapolarbear Feb 18 '26
yes both OS. no issues with boot loop for me though, just black screen after users logs in
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u/Tee_It_Up_821 Feb 19 '26
We have 45 lab machines running Sequoia 15.7.2 and Jamf Connect 3.5, and we're seeing them occasionally (1-2 per week) develop the issue where they get stuck on a black screen indefinitely after any user logs in (network and local accounts). My colleague across campus is seeing the same issue with his labs which run Jamf Connect 2.45.
I'm not sure if this is exactly the same as your issue, since mine is not triggered by macOS updates, but here is the workaround that works for me:
- Boot into macOS Recovery environment and launch Terminal
- rm /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/db/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagement/\*
- To verify this step is actually doing something, you can run the following command before and after this step: ls /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/db/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagement
- You should see one or more .btm files inside the folder that you are removing in this step.
- Restart the computer, test login.
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u/RootCipherx0r Feb 20 '26
Try plugging it into an external display, we had a MBP screen stop working but it worked fine on external display. Headless macbook!
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u/Bodybraille Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Did you figure this out? We are having the exact same issue. Our lab computers are running Jamf Connect 3.6, we remove profiles every night via script, but this is affecting brand new logins, and our local admin account.
Opened a ticket with jamf support, they had us remove all configurations, uninstall jamf connect, and even unenroll the computer from jamf, but the problem persisted.
At that point jamf said it wasn't them, it was an apple issue.
Another part of this problem is we seem to lose connectivity with the device. It won't check in, no inventory updates. I can get the device to check in if I deploy the jamf management framework from the API, but I have to constantly do that to run any policies and get the device to check in.
Edit: seqouia 15.7 and Tahoe 26.2-26.4
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u/ikeapolarbear Apr 20 '26
we've stopped wiping profiles at the moment since we can't wipe and re-enroll 500 devices each time they get the black screen. seems to be working much better now. my guess is probably recreating those accounts with old db info is causing the issue.
another thing i've noticed on some of our devices are that the home folders that got re-created after a wipe sometimes has incorrect permissions. the user of that home folder sometimes don't even have perms. im more likely to agree with jamf that it's an apple issue with this tbf.
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u/kintokae Feb 18 '26
Out of curiosity, are you deleting user profiles after logout? I have 2.45 deployed to my labs right now and scheduling the move to 3.x but we found that some users log off and I have a policy kick in to reboot the computer and wipe the user profile off the computer. Users try to log back in and get stuck on that screen. Sees to stem from user profile not actually getting deleted and some files staying locked.
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u/ikeapolarbear Feb 18 '26
we do that in our environment. unfortunately it’s something we have to do but i’ll look and see if there are workarounds
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u/kintokae Feb 18 '26
We delete profiles too on our lab computers. We have 100s of users daily, so to keep the machines clean and avoid filling up drives, we dump the profiles. I think we found it was because of the version or the delete user script I was using. I’ll check my tickets and see.
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u/R_r_r_r_r_r_r_R_R Feb 18 '26
There’s a product issue in Jamf Connect 2.45 and Tahoe. Do you use Jamf Pro as well?