Same problem here - white rectangle appears around clipping masks when masking gradients with transparency
iMac
Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017
3.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
Radeon Pro 570 4 GB
40 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Ventura 13.7.6

Rolling back to 29.5 fixed it for me also.

Whenever I use blur or a PNG that's already background removed, and put on a colored canvas, it suddenly gets a background. But when it goes outside of it, the background is gone.

the white rectangle appears when there is a gradient whit transparency inside de clipping mask

the white rectangle appears when there is gradient with a transparent color in it

Illustrator 29.6.1
MacOS 15.5
iMac PRO 2017

the clipping masks show white rectangle

Upon upgrading to Ai 29.6.1 it has introduced rendering issues to shapes with clipping masks. You can see the behaviour in the video. It draws a white box where the bounding boxes seem to intersect. This has behaved exactly the same after multiple reboots so it doesn't seem to be going away. After some testing I can see what seems to trigger it.

- it seems to only happen when the interior shape has a slightly more complex appearance
- it occurs when the interior shape has both a fill and a stroke and has less than 100% opacity on either element.
- Switching to Pixel Preview eliminates the issue
- Copying and pasting the vector files to Photoshop does not transfer the issue, even when pasting as a Smart Object
- Switching OFF GPU Performance in the Performance Settings fixes the issue. It also makes Ai sloooooowwwww and kinda hellish to work in.

- MacOS 15.5 > Intel iMac Pro 2017

Illustrator 29.6.1 on Mac Ventura 13.5.2.

I have a JPG image and a Shape. When I clip the image, Clipping Mask works just fine. However, if I change the image transparency, I get a white rectangle the size of the Shape.

Note that the map in the background is also a clipped JPG with transparency and there's no problem with it. (Edit: silly me, of course, the "bounding rectangle" of this mask is the same as the shape)

Please help!

hi Egor
may I know any update for the issue?

Thank you Karina.

Here's a videos showing the workflow (attached).

@ahmad I saw your screenshot and yes, that’s what is happening .

I installed Illustrator Beta 29.7.41 to capture a screenshot (attached).

@Ahmad. Yes. It’s happening when I have transparency in the clipping mask

Is there any transparency inside the clipping masks?

I am wondering if it is the same bug I described in this report: (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/50092491)

save as pdf, and export jpg and export for web are fine, it may just a preview issue

Sure, I get it... something has changed between the build obviously....
The team has been informed.
I wonder if this bug stays when you try to export an image?

hi Egor
but I need to do the graphic with transparent this preview issue happened when I updated ai 205, if I use ai 2024, the preview is fine

Checked this on Intel i7 4470 3.4GHz, RAM 24GB, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti — behaves fine for me... making one gradient stop semitransparent doesn’t make white background behind clip group. Perhaps it’s something GPU-specific.

Preview issue after updated illustrator
When an irregular shape clipping mask a gradient shape with opacity control, the preview is not correct, the graphic will show white colour outside of the mask which is the part of gradient object.

On pixel view is fine

iMac
Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019
Processor 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Core
i5
Graphics Radeon Pro 570X 4 GB
Memory 40 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

macOS Sequoia 15.5

Adobe illustrator 2025 29.6

'Blank square'? Please show how it looks (both the object on canvas and its location in the Layers panel).
If possible — share the file here. Add more details: when it happens? What kind of objects does this affect?

Some clipping masks are showing with a blank square.