Fix Black Screen When Using Spy in Katalon Studio [geckodriver / GFX Issue]

Web Testing
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Hi,

Just following up if there is a fix for this issue. We currently have Katalon Studio version 8.3.5 build 208.

When using object spy with multiple monitors and one of the screens being a laptop. Any time we get a MS Teams notification, the laptop screen blacks out, and you have to reopen everything. It will black the screen out every MS Teams notification after using object spy. The only way to resolve the issue is to restart the laptop.

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@vu.tran @Jass Is there more information that needs to be provided here to get assistance? Thanks, S

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Hi all, @mgrandillo

I would love to ask if anyone’s still facing this issue. If yes, please help create a new thread and link it here so that we can support this issue. If no, feel free to share any possible workaround or we will process to close this. Thank you

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Hey! I’ve noticed it sometimes happens when there’s a mismatch with the browser driver or if hardware acceleration is acting up in the browser settings. Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration or making sure your Chrome/Edge driver is fully up to date? Usually, one of those two fixes it for me.

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worth to try this

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The black screen happens because Katalon’s “Spy” tool is crashing your graphics driver while trying to draw red boxes over the browser.

The 3-second fix: Don’t reboot. Press Win + Ctrl + Shift + B on your keyboard. This restarts your graphics driver instantly and should bring your monitor back to life.

To stop it from happening: Turn off Hardware Acceleration in your browser settings (Chrome/Edge). This prevents the browser and Katalon from fighting over your GPU, which is what’s causing the “trap” in the first place.

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Solution Summary

This issue is caused by a geckodriver/GFX conflict, you’ll typically see “out of memory” and “GFX” mentioned in the Katalon Studio console when it happens.
Fix: Update your built-in geckodriver to version 0.27 or later. Several users confirmed this resolved the recurring black-screen crashes during Spy Web use (see @Russ_Thomas’s post below for the original diagnosis).
If you’re still seeing this on a recent KS version, reply below with your KS version + screenshot so we can help further.