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Since upgrading to Catalina (2016 Macbook Pro) a few weeks ago, every now and then I find there are "invisible rectangles" on on the screen where I can’t move my mouse.

They're always [edit months later: not 100% always, actually] anchored to the top left, and could be on the primary or secondary monitor. They're varying widths and heights that don’t seem to correspond to any specific application windows. They don’t go away if you quit or hide applications. The usual width is anywhere from about 100 to 400px, and the height is anywhere from 200px to the full height of the screen.

Theses things do disappear on their own sometimes, but disconnecting the external monitor doesn’t get rid of them — it just moves them the laptop screen, but usually with different proportions. They're always gone after a restart.

I can’t seem to connect these to any specific app; like I said, they persist even if I quit all apps including utils that just run in the menu bar.

Here’s a screen recording of me trying to move the mouse to the upper left corner, via regular moving and dragging a selection area: https://i.sstatic.net/j1UXt.jpg

I've tried looking in Activity Monitor when this is happening, but even with all the regular apps quit, there are still tons of system processes going on so it's hard to spot anything unusual.

This look/sound like anything any of you have seen before?

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    This one seems similar: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/382559/… Although the answer in the linked question did not help me when I had the same issue today.
    – Christoph
    Commented Oct 20, 2020 at 15:00
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    Can confirm the linked question is the same problem as you have. Mostly my blocked box was bottom right but also top left.
    – Daniel W.
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 10:51
  • Worth noting that the linked question finally got an answer that fixes the problem!
    – Christoph
    Commented Jan 7, 2021 at 9:06
  • Thanks, @Christoph! Yep, that kills the rectangles for me to. Direct link to the answer: apple.stackexchange.com/a/405842/45269
    – RwwL
    Commented Jan 11, 2021 at 15:51

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In case people miss it in the comments under the question, here's a link to the resolution that someone noted on a different post for the same issue:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/405842/45269

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