Flickering while thinking of tasks

[breennoliveira]

Describe the bug

While Copilot CLI is thinking the screen visibly flickers.

Affected version

❯ copilot --version 0.0.328 Commit: 3755a93

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Issue copilot.
Give it some task like "Create a Github Issue to perform X task"
Watch it think and flicker.
When CopilotCLI gives you options to select, and you scroll through them it also flickers.

Expected behavior

No Flicker.

Additional context

Windows 11 running Copilot under WSL. Linux Distro is Archlinux. Using TMUX 3.5a.

[RyanHecht]

Thanks for the report! We're working on tracking down flickering bugs on various platforms

[nathfavour]

yeah, also not trying to exaggerate, but this is a really, really buggy issue.
In very long chat contexts, the flickering can last for several minutes, putting all other work on hold.
You can't even neither see the input box nor the input selector until all of that is done.

[stuartpurgavie]

Hello,

Also getting this behaviour on Fedora 43 Workstation edition. Happened shortly after setting up SpecKit so I'm not sure if this is relevant. After asking Copilot to review the SpecKit constitution, the next request gets several steps in and then the flicker and freeze begins. Even giving Copilot-CLI up to 15 minutes does not allow it to proceed after it gets to the flickering point.

EDIT: After editing all markdown in the .specify subdirectory with Prettier using options proseWrap: always and printWidth: 80 things seem to have gotten better...

[ori-nonni]

yeah, also not trying to exaggerate, but this is a really, really buggy issue. In very long chat contexts, the flickering can last for several minutes, putting all other work on hold. You can't even neither see the input box nor the input selector until all of that is done.

Do you mean the flickering crash? #1874

[devm33]

Hello, we have shipped a new rendering approach to fix this problem. Please update to latest and give it a try.

[ori-nonni]

Hello, we have shipped a new rendering approach to fix this problem. Please update to latest and give it a try.

Here is the release referenced, which sets the alt screen as default: https://github.com/github/copilot-cli/releases/tag/v1.0.12
Also to add to this! I'm currently running 1.0.2. The --alt-screen flag fixes the issue (you can also set this setting in config). It would
have been helpful to know this sooner.