A flickering Windows 11 screen can be really annoying, but there are ways to fix it.

A bad display driver or an incompatible app in Windows 11 can cause an annoying screen flickering issue. You may notice this effect more often when you drag an app or work with the taskbar.

Fortunately, fixing the issue is relatively straightforward and you can do it by yourself. Let's explore how to troubleshoot the screen flickering issue in Windows 11.

To determine whether the problem lies with a drive or an app, you can use the Task Manager to perform a little diagnostic. If it does flicker, you can use this information to better identify what's causing the issue on your system.

Now, see if the Task Manager flickers like everything else on the screen. If yes, you may have a bad display driver to fix. However, if the Task Manager is not flickering, an incompatible app is probably causing the flickering display issue.

Related: How to Access the Task Manager on Windows 11

Display-related issues are a common issue on newly-installed Windows systems. When you perform a clean install, your system might require additional updates from your laptop or hardware manufacturer before it works properly.

If your PC is brand new, installing pending updates is one of the many things to do before using a new computer.

If you have recently installed new drivers for your graphics card, roll back your display driver. This will undo the changes and restore the previous version of the driver.

To roll back display driver:

Restart your PC once the rollback is complete and check for any improvements.

Related: Take Back Control Over Driver Updates in Windows 10

If the Roll Back Driver button is grayed out, Windows doesn’t display driver's previous version ready, and you cannot perform a rollback at the moment. However, you can try updating the display driver to see if that helps fix the issue.

Updating to the latest version of the display driver can help if the existing driver is corrupt or buggy. To update your display driver, do the following:

Windows will search for new drivers and install them if available. If not, look for driver updates through Windows update or on your GPU OEM’s website. For information, explore our guide on how to upgrade graphics drivers in Windows.

If the display flickering issue occurs due to a corrupt driver, you can uninstall the display driver from your system and see if that does the trick. To uninstall the display driver, do the following:

Another way to fix the screen flickering issue in Windows 11 is to set the background to Solid color instead of Slideshow. While this is more of a workaround than a fix, it should help you to ward off the problem temporarily.

To change your personalization settings:

That’s it. Monitor your system to see if the screen flickering problem in Windows 11 is resolved.

You can also temporarily fix the screen flickering issue by turning off animation effects in Windows 11. Since the Animation effects is part of the new design language, this is again more of a workaround than a fix.

To turn off Animations effects, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Visual Effects > Animation effects. This will turn off every animation effect on your system.

If you don't want to turn off every animation effect, do the following:

This will turn off animation effects for control and other elements. But retain other animations, including minimizing and maximizing and taskbar animation effects.

App incompatibility is a common cause of screen flickering issues. Uninstalling the incompatible app may fix this problem for good. However, how do you determine if an app is causing your issues, and which app is the troublemaker?

To fix this, you can perform a clean boot in Windows 11 to determine if an issue is triggered due to a third-party app. In clean boot mode, Windows restarts the system with only the necessary drivers and services to get Windows running.

If the flickering screen problem does not occur in clean boot mode, a third-party app is likely the culprit here. Make sure to turn off the clean boot mode and restart your PC.

To identify the problematic app:

You can often fix your flickering screen through a display driver update, reinstalling your drivers, or performing a driver rollback. However, if it is a glitch in the OS, look for available hotfixes in the Windows update section.

Third-party apps are another common cause, so removing any such tricky app can help you resolve the problem. If nothing works, tweak your accessibility and personalization settings to see if that helps.

Tashreef is a developer and works as a technical writer at MakeUseOf. With a bachelor's degree in Computer Applications, he has over 5 years of experience and covers Microsoft Windows and everything around it. When not looking for a missing semicolon or churning out text, you can find him trying FPS titles or looking for new animated shows and movies.

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