Certain blocks flicker when I am 'targeted' on any block or at certain angles - I've noticed it on glass, chests, and water so far. Graphic drivers, Minecraft, and OS are up to date and I do not use any mods/shaders. My PC meets the minimum requirements to operate Minecraft. I've messed with my in-game graphics settings some as well.
They just go between their normal texture and nothing, there's no weird textures.
If anyone has any more ideas, please let me know - it's not game breaking, I can still interact with chests and other blocks when they're flickering, but it ruins the experience.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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This actually sounds like a rendering issue rather than broken textures. The big giveaway is that it only happens when you’re looking at or targeting certain blocks, and mostly ones that are transparent or semi-transparent (glass, water, chests).
A few things that are worth trying, since these are common causes:
First, check your graphics mode in Minecraft. If you’re using Fabulous!, switch it to Fancy or Fast and restart the game. Fabulous uses a different rendering method and it’s known to cause flickering like this on some systems, even without shaders.
Next, if you’ve ever changed graphics settings in your GPU control panel, make sure anti-aliasing is set to “application-controlled” and not forced on. Driver-level anti-aliasing (especially FXAA) can mess with Minecraft’s depth rendering and cause blocks to flicker when selected.
You can also try adjusting mipmap levels in Video Settings. Setting it lower (even all the way to 0) fixes this for some people. It affects how textures are rendered at different distances, and sometimes causes weird depth behavior.
Toggling VSync is another simple thing that can help. For some setups it causes the issue, for others it fixes it — so just try turning it on or off and see if it makes a difference.
If you’re on a laptop with both integrated and dedicated graphics, make sure Minecraft is actually using the dedicated GPU. If it’s bouncing between GPUs, you can get exactly this kind of flickering.
As a last resort, you can close the game, delete the options.txt file in your .minecraft folder, and let the game regenerate it. Occasionally a corrupted setting can cause visual glitches like this.
It’s a pretty common vanilla Minecraft issue tied to how transparent blocks are rendered, not your PC being too weak or anything being “broken.” Annoying, but usually fixable with one of the steps above.
Tried all of those, none have improved it, even with restarting after each modification - I haven't messed with my GPU control panel (and don't know how to access it currently, but I could learn). Would it be reasonable to assume it's set to application-controlled by default?
As a last resort, you can close the game, delete the options.txt file in your .minecraft folder, and let the game regenerate it. Occasionally a corrupted setting can cause visual glitches like this.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Since deleting options.txt helped and then it broke again, that almost always means something else is changing it behind the scenes.
A couple things I’d check:
Cloud sync stuff – If you use OneDrive, Google Drive, etc., make sure your .minecraft folder isn’t being synced. That can totally undo your changes and bring the broken settings back every launch.
Something rewriting the file – After it’s working, close the game and check options.txt. If the date/time changes later when you didn’t touch anything, something is messing with it (antivirus, “PC optimizer” apps, that kind of thing).
GPU settings – Even if you’ve never touched them, open your GPU control panel once and reset everything to default. Driver updates sometimes leave weird global settings behind and Minecraft really doesn’t like that.
Fullscreen vs windowed – Try hitting F11 and playing windowed/borderless for a bit. I’ve seen flickering bugs tied specifically to fullscreen.
Quick test – Make a brand-new launcher profile and don’t change any settings. If it doesn’t flicker there, you know for sure it’s a config issue and not your PC.
If you just want it to stop for now: once it’s fixed, close the game and set options.txt to read-only. It’s a bit of a bandaid, but it works if something keeps re-breaking it.
If the issue is something changing options.txt you can find out what is changing in the file, and a clue as to exactly what is breaking, by saving a copy of the "good" file and using the following site to compare it to the "bad" one (note: if the issue goes away until the next game launch then it can't be assumed that the file is good between those times, copy the file while it is still running when the issue isn't happening):
I set options.txt to read-only, restarted my game, and it's still flickering. I also set my GPU settings to default prior to testing that. Fullscreen and windows both flicker.
Nothing is syncing the game, and I can't get it to a 'good' setting to test if it's being rewritten.
Could it be a bug at this point?
Tried deleting and letting my game create the options.txt file - this time it didn't stop the flickering at default settings
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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At this point, yes — it is almost certainly not a normal settings problem anymore.
There are three important clues in what you described:
Deleting options.txt temporarily fixed it once
Now even a freshly regenerated options.txt still flickers
Read-only and GPU resets made no difference
That combination rules out:
Corrupt settings
Cloud sync
Driver control panel overrides
VSync, mipmaps, AA, Fabulous, etc.
What you are seeing is a known vanilla Minecraft rendering bug that affects transparent and tile-entity blocks (glass, water, chests) when the depth buffer becomes unstable. When you “target” a block, Minecraft switches to a special outline and depth test pass — and that’s when the blocks vanish/reappear.
In other words:
The GPU is being asked to draw two things in the same depth plane, and it can’t consistently decide which one is in front. That causes Z-fighting, which looks exactly like “flickering between normal and invisible.”
Why it comes back
It worked briefly because deleting options.txt forced Minecraft to reset:
Render pipeline
Framebuffers
Resolution scaling
But once the game recreated its internal render targets (or you changed resolution, fullscreen, or alt-tabbed), the bug returned. After that, it persists until the entire render cache is rebuilt — and in some cases not even then.
This is why it:
Happens at certain angles
Happens when looking at or targeting blocks
Mostly affects transparent or tile-entity blocks
It is not:
Your GPU
Your drivers
Your OS
Your PC being too weak
It is Minecraft’s modern renderer (especially 1.20+).
The real fix
The fix is not in options.txt.
You have three actual solutions:
1) Disable the new renderer (best fix)
In the Minecraft launcher:
Open Installations
Click Edit on your version
Click More Options
Add:
-Dforge.disableFramebuffer=true
or
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false
(try one at a time)
This forces Minecraft off the buggy GPU depth path that causes flickering.
2) Force OpenGL instead of DirectX
If you are on Windows with newer drivers, Minecraft may be running through ANGLE (DirectX wrapper), which is notorious for this exact bug.
While I have no immediate suggestions to make, does this happen with some recent older versions as well? or is it limited to relatively recent versions? Does, say, 1.21.4 or 1.20.1 have the issue as well?
Is this vanilla, or modded?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If it happens in the latest version and in vanilla, then I suspect 1.21.4 and older might be fine, and you might not even have to go back that far, but that's a guess. Rendering changes have been occurring since 1.21.5 so there's a chance a certain setting may alleviate this.
I would also recommend trying the Sodium rendering mod and seeing if you have the issue with that as well. If you do, it's probably some issue between your graphics drivers and new versions of the game due to rendering changes.
If this also happens in versions like 1.21.4 and 1.20.1, then there's more to it. Knowing your graphics hardware and driver version might help at that point.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I guess I'll just play on an older version for now, and hope they fix whatever it is causing this. Maybe I'll figure out how to install that mod sometime. Thank you for the help + advice everyone <3
Also works on 1.21.8, which is great, because that's the oldest version the server I play on supports
Certain blocks flicker when I am 'targeted' on any block or at certain angles - I've noticed it on glass, chests, and water so far. Graphic drivers, Minecraft, and OS are up to date and I do not use any mods/shaders. My PC meets the minimum requirements to operate Minecraft. I've messed with my in-game graphics settings some as well.
They just go between their normal texture and nothing, there's no weird textures.
If anyone has any more ideas, please let me know - it's not game breaking, I can still interact with chests and other blocks when they're flickering, but it ruins the experience.
This actually sounds like a rendering issue rather than broken textures. The big giveaway is that it only happens when you’re looking at or targeting certain blocks, and mostly ones that are transparent or semi-transparent (glass, water, chests).
A few things that are worth trying, since these are common causes:
First, check your graphics mode in Minecraft. If you’re using Fabulous!, switch it to Fancy or Fast and restart the game. Fabulous uses a different rendering method and it’s known to cause flickering like this on some systems, even without shaders.
Next, if you’ve ever changed graphics settings in your GPU control panel, make sure anti-aliasing is set to “application-controlled” and not forced on. Driver-level anti-aliasing (especially FXAA) can mess with Minecraft’s depth rendering and cause blocks to flicker when selected.
You can also try adjusting mipmap levels in Video Settings. Setting it lower (even all the way to 0) fixes this for some people. It affects how textures are rendered at different distances, and sometimes causes weird depth behavior.
Toggling VSync is another simple thing that can help. For some setups it causes the issue, for others it fixes it — so just try turning it on or off and see if it makes a difference.
If you’re on a laptop with both integrated and dedicated graphics, make sure Minecraft is actually using the dedicated GPU. If it’s bouncing between GPUs, you can get exactly this kind of flickering.
As a last resort, you can close the game, delete the options.txt file in your .minecraft folder, and let the game regenerate it. Occasionally a corrupted setting can cause visual glitches like this.
It’s a pretty common vanilla Minecraft issue tied to how transparent blocks are rendered, not your PC being too weak or anything being “broken.” Annoying, but usually fixable with one of the steps above.
~Greninja9257
HELP TRAIN MY AI! Here: https://turing-ai.replit.app
Tried all of those, none have improved it, even with restarting after each modification - I haven't messed with my GPU control panel (and don't know how to access it currently, but I could learn). Would it be reasonable to assume it's set to application-controlled by default?
So I missed this bit - that fixed it, thank you so much! <3
Never mind - it broke again.
Since deleting options.txt helped and then it broke again, that almost always means something else is changing it behind the scenes.
A couple things I’d check:
Cloud sync stuff – If you use OneDrive, Google Drive, etc., make sure your .minecraft folder isn’t being synced. That can totally undo your changes and bring the broken settings back every launch.
Something rewriting the file – After it’s working, close the game and check options.txt. If the date/time changes later when you didn’t touch anything, something is messing with it (antivirus, “PC optimizer” apps, that kind of thing).
GPU settings – Even if you’ve never touched them, open your GPU control panel once and reset everything to default. Driver updates sometimes leave weird global settings behind and Minecraft really doesn’t like that.
Fullscreen vs windowed – Try hitting F11 and playing windowed/borderless for a bit. I’ve seen flickering bugs tied specifically to fullscreen.
Quick test – Make a brand-new launcher profile and don’t change any settings. If it doesn’t flicker there, you know for sure it’s a config issue and not your PC.
If you just want it to stop for now: once it’s fixed, close the game and set options.txt to read-only. It’s a bit of a bandaid, but it works if something keeps re-breaking it.
~Greninja9257
HELP TRAIN MY AI! Here: https://turing-ai.replit.app
If the issue is something changing options.txt you can find out what is changing in the file, and a clue as to exactly what is breaking, by saving a copy of the "good" file and using the following site to compare it to the "bad" one (note: if the issue goes away until the next game launch then it can't be assumed that the file is good between those times, copy the file while it is still running when the issue isn't happening):
https://www.diffchecker.com/
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I set options.txt to read-only, restarted my game, and it's still flickering. I also set my GPU settings to default prior to testing that. Fullscreen and windows both flicker.
Nothing is syncing the game, and I can't get it to a 'good' setting to test if it's being rewritten.
Could it be a bug at this point?
Tried deleting and letting my game create the options.txt file - this time it didn't stop the flickering at default settings
At this point, yes — it is almost certainly not a normal settings problem anymore.
There are three important clues in what you described:
That combination rules out:
What you are seeing is a known vanilla Minecraft rendering bug that affects transparent and tile-entity blocks (glass, water, chests) when the depth buffer becomes unstable. When you “target” a block, Minecraft switches to a special outline and depth test pass — and that’s when the blocks vanish/reappear.
In other words:
The GPU is being asked to draw two things in the same depth plane, and it can’t consistently decide which one is in front. That causes Z-fighting, which looks exactly like “flickering between normal and invisible.”
Why it comes back
It worked briefly because deleting options.txt forced Minecraft to reset:
But once the game recreated its internal render targets (or you changed resolution, fullscreen, or alt-tabbed), the bug returned. After that, it persists until the entire render cache is rebuilt — and in some cases not even then.
This is why it:
It is not:
It is Minecraft’s modern renderer (especially 1.20+).
The real fix
The fix is not in options.txt.
You have three actual solutions:
1) Disable the new renderer (best fix)
In the Minecraft launcher:
-Dforge.disableFramebuffer=true
or
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false
(try one at a time)
This forces Minecraft off the buggy GPU depth path that causes flickering.
2) Force OpenGL instead of DirectX
If you are on Windows with newer drivers, Minecraft may be running through ANGLE (DirectX wrapper), which is notorious for this exact bug.
Add this JVM argument:
-Dorg.lwjgl.opengl.Display.allowSoftwareOpenGL=false
or install the official OpenGL driver package from Intel/NVIDIA if you are on integrated graphics.
3) Nuclear option: delete the render cache
Go to:
.minecraft
Delete:
options.txt
optionsof.txt
shaderpacks (if present)
logs
Then also delete
.minecraft\assets\indexes
.minecraft\assets\objects
Minecraft will redownload them. This flushes the render pipeline cache.
~Greninja9257
HELP TRAIN MY AI! Here: https://turing-ai.replit.app
Neither fix #1 or #2 worked, and my PC could not find an .minecraft file (I used windows + R)
Should I try redownloading everything? (the launcher + game)
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ModeratorWhat version of Minecraft are you using?
1.21.11
I believe it's the most recent non-snapshot release, could be wrong though.
While I have no immediate suggestions to make, does this happen with some recent older versions as well? or is it limited to relatively recent versions? Does, say, 1.21.4 or 1.20.1 have the issue as well?
Is this vanilla, or modded?
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
Pure vanilla - and I'll test it on one or two older versions now
(it also happens on servers with resource packs, if that helps?)
If it happens in the latest version and in vanilla, then I suspect 1.21.4 and older might be fine, and you might not even have to go back that far, but that's a guess. Rendering changes have been occurring since 1.21.5 so there's a chance a certain setting may alleviate this.
I would also recommend trying the Sodium rendering mod and seeing if you have the issue with that as well. If you do, it's probably some issue between your graphics drivers and new versions of the game due to rendering changes.
If this also happens in versions like 1.21.4 and 1.20.1, then there's more to it. Knowing your graphics hardware and driver version might help at that point.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
1.19.4 is fine, and so is 1.21.4
I guess I'll just play on an older version for now, and hope they fix whatever it is causing this. Maybe I'll figure out how to install that mod sometime. Thank you for the help + advice everyone <3
Also works on 1.21.8, which is great, because that's the oldest version the server I play on supports