Issues With Display Preferences Resetting on M1 Mini, External Monitor

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Issues With Display Preferences Resetting on M1 Mini, External Monitor

I'm using a new Mac Mini M1 2020 w/ 8GB of RAM on macOS 11.5 20G71 (which I love). I have an issue with the color temperature constantly resetting on the Mac. I've seen a series of posts about this, but they invariably suggest turning off True Tone. In my case, True Tone is not an option.

I'm using an Acer KA272 monitor via an HDMI connection, which does not have issues with my Intel MacbookPro or my PC.

At some point while working the screen color settings seem to reset, and the grey coloring turns an odd pink-ish. I can easily reset the display by navigating to Preferences > Displays > Color and re-selecting the monitor display profile (which is already selected).

This instantly fixes the issue, but it resets minutes later. I think, interestingly, it resets when I switch desktops via Mission Control. I thought perhaps each desktop would retain color settings independently, so I set them all properly, only to have them reset again when changing. I've tried various suggestions I have found in other posts: calibrated the display, tried a new cable, tried 'detect displays'... all to no avail. Any insight or solutions that folks have found would be welcome.

Posted on Aug 4, 2021 8:51 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Thomas Hanford Author

Level 1

56 points

Aug 21, 2021 6:16 PM in response to Thomas Hanford

I'm posting an update here - since I believe I resolved the issue, and wanted to share in the event it helps others. I ran the ColorSync utility, and discovered that there were multiple profiles for my (single) display - KA272.

(NOTE: the Duet profile is for an application, and I also tried uninstalling that to no avail prior to doing what I describe here.)

I had already removed a custom calibration days earlier, and that did not seem to be the issue or the reason for a second profile. Only one KA272 profile was shown on the Displays settings.

I found the location of the profiles (.icc) in the Library (/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/file_name.icc), and removed them. I then restarted the machine, which resulted in the creation of a new, clean profile, and no duplicates. Since doing so, I have not had additional issues.

While I'm not an expert on this issue, I did notice that the profiles differed slightly. I am wondering if an erroneous profile kept re-asserting itself, since it had the same name and was also a profile for the monitor.

At any rate, I hope this might be helpful to another user with a similar issue.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 9

77,158 points

Aug 4, 2021 8:29 PM in response to Thomas Hanford

In addition to unchecking "Displays have separate Spaces" as woodmeister50 suggests.

Try deleting the KA272 Calibrated profile that you made and use the KA272 profile.

Then use the displays on-board controls to adjust the brightness and color.

Go to the following users guide and look at user controls starting in section 11

https://global-download.acer.com/GDFiles/Document/User%20Manual/User%20Manual_Acer_1.0_A_A.pdf?

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Answer 3

Aug 9, 2021 9:07 AM in response to Thomas Hanford

I too have an M1 Mini, and the monitor has issues as well. Dell 27". The resolution resets spontaneously and shuffles my desktop all around. I have to reboot to get it to change back, but the desktop needs to be reorganized again. The computer is set to the monitor's default settings, but chooses something else. <GRRRR> I think this happens when the machine goes to sleep. There was a time when I couldn't get it to wake from sleep, but that hasn't happened for a while. Now it just makes everything GINORMOUS and tries to fit everything on fewer pixels. Of late I have done a few things to try and see if it's a memory issue. (16 gigs) I have removed many photos from my screen saver shots folder. Also, I make sure that Stickies is not open. I have lots of them, and since you can't close any of them without deleting them, they all get shuffled and reorganized when the resolution changes. It takes a long time to put them back where I had them. I have exported them to Notes and am trying not to use Stickies any more. I haven't had the issue since making these 2 changes, so I can't say for sure if it's fixed, if it's the quantity or size of images in the screen saver folder, an issue with Stickies ... or both. BTW, I'm running 3 Macs with a VGA KVM: 2 Minis and an really old G5. There are a lot of adapters involved to make this work, but work it must. I have software I use that can't be updated I really need on these older machines. The G5 is what I used to run my business on and some of my other hardware hasn't (and may not) make the switch to M1 and Big Sur.

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Answer 4

Aug 19, 2021 2:46 PM in response to den.thed

Thanks! I did delete the new profile previously. I also created it (and recreated it) to see if I could impact it. I also referred to the manual and searched for similar Acer issues. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be a monitor hardware issue (at least not one I can affect). The color resets when making the change on the Display Pregerences, and can even differ between spaces. It really appears as if “True Tone” is being repeatedly enabled (a complaint among other M1 Mini users) but it’s not an option for the monitor.

I ordered a USB-C to HDMI cable to see if that improves things. This is a recommendation I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m not sure, however how or if that will impact this.

oddly, this is only happening with the M1 Mini. My Intel MacBook Air and my work Intel MacBook Pro are not having these results. My Air is on MacOS Big Sur and the Pro is on Catalina.

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Answer 5

Aug 4, 2021 1:08 PM in response to Thomas Hanford

In System Preferences->Mission Control, see if you have "Displays have separate spaces" checked. If not check it and see what happens. If it is checked, uncheck it and see what happens.

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Answer 6

Aug 19, 2021 2:36 PM in response to woodmeister50

Thanks very much for this helpful reply. I did attempt to do this - checked and unchecked - rebooting in both instances as directed. The behavior continued, unfortunately.

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Issues With Display Preferences Resetting on M1 Mini, External Monitor

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