macOS: Metal Performance HUD appears in JetBrains IDE after pressing Shift+F9

Problem

On macOS, a black overlay panel appears in the top-right corner of IDE windows and dialogs and covers buttons. The panel shows the GPU name (for example, M1 Ultra), the macOS version, the screen resolution, Composited, Metal and App memory, Game Mode, FPS, GPU, Frame Interval, and a frame-time graph. While the panel is visible, a Metal HUD menu appears in the menu bar.

The panel appears after pressing Shift+F9, for example when starting a debug session with the Eclipse keymap. It appears only in the IDE, not in other applications. It stays even when the MTL_HUD_ENABLED environment variable is 0 and no HUD key exists in the macOS user defaults.

Reported environment: macOS 27.0 on Apple M1 Ultra, IntelliJ IDEA 2026.3 EAP, Eclipse keymap.

Cause

The panel is the Metal Performance HUD, a macOS developer overlay. Apple's Metal Performance HUD documentation describes its fields. It is not an IDE feature, and the IDE has no setting or registry key for it.

JetBrains IDEs render with Metal on macOS, so the HUD attaches to IDE windows. On macOS, Shift+F9 (Shift+Fn+F9 on keyboards where the function keys control media) toggles the HUD in applications that render with Metal. When an IDE action uses the same shortcut, one key press runs the action and toggles the HUD.

The Eclipse keymap binds the Debug action to Shift+Alt+D and Shift+F9. The macOS variant of the Eclipse keymap binds Debug to Cmd+F11 and does not use Shift+F9.

Resolution

To hide the HUD, press Shift+F9 again.

To stop the HUD from appearing when a debug session starts, remove Shift+F9 from the Debug action (Configure keyboard shortcuts):

1. Open the IDE settings and select Keymap.
2. In the search field, type Debug.
3. Right-click the Debug action, remove the Shift+F9 shortcut, and add a different shortcut if needed.
4. Click OK.

To keep the HUD off in the IDE completely, switch the IDE rendering pipeline from Metal to OpenGL:

1. Select Help | Edit Custom VM Options….
2. Add the line -Dsun.java2d.metal=false.
3. Restart the IDE.

Apple deprecated OpenGL on macOS. Use this option only when the HUD must stay off, and remove the line to return to Metal rendering.