A strange black circle suddenly appeared on my screen while iTunes was open. It seemed to move around, and its two "eyes" shifted slightly, but it didn't respond to any input or appear as a separate app in the taskbar. The only way to make it disappear was to force-close iTunes. I was worried it might be something involving my webcam or a glitch—does anyone recognize it?
3 Answers
It probably wasn’t the webcam. Since closing iTunes made it vanish, the visualizer explanation fits much better than anything camera-related.
That’s almost certainly iTunes’ built-in Music Visualizer. It displays animated shapes and patterns over the screen, and the dark circle with shifting “eyes” is just one of its visual effects. It can apparently get enabled accidentally or appear unexpectedly if iTunes glitches.
It could have been a graphics-rendering glitch involving iTunes or your display drivers, especially if it looked distorted or appeared outside the normal player window. Updating the graphics driver and restarting iTunes would be reasonable if it happens again.
This was it! I completely forgot iTunes had visual effects, and it scared the life out of me. Thanks for identifying it!