Washed out colors when plugging an M1 MacBook Air to a 1080p MSI external display.

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Washed out colors when plugging an M1 MacBook Air to a 1080p MSI external display.

Hi everyone,

As stated in the title, when connecting my MacBook Air M1 with an MSI G241 1080p high refresh rate display through an HDMI UGREEN Hub, the colors are really washed out and the black levels are raised (so blacks look grey and all the colors look washed out and pale).

This is really disappointing since other windows laptops have no issue outputting the correct colors when connected to the same monitor, so I know this is an issue with macOS or the MacBook.

I have tried changing the color profile and refresh rate( which by the way displays correctly at 144Hz)

I also tried a tutorial to force RGB output instead of YCbCr, and It didn't solve anything.

The tutorial: https://gist.github.com/GetVladimir/c89a26df1806001543bef4c8d90cc2f8

I would like to know if any of you had this issue and if or how it was resolved?

I am currently on macOs Monterey 12.4

Thanks in advance.

Posted on Jun 14, 2022 6:47 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

TammyW_03

Community Specialist

Jun 16, 2022 9:22 AM in response to lazydoc08

lazydoc08,

That's good to know, and using another cable was going to be the next suggestion. The hub could be causing interference but the only way to know is to connect the display without it, using an adapter instead. If that's not an option or the behavior continues, we recommend reaching out to Apple Support to look into this in more detail: Get Support

Thanks for participating in Apple Support Communities.

Best regards.

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Answer 2

TammyW_03

Community Specialist

Jun 15, 2022 9:21 AM in response to lazydoc08

lazydoc08,

You completed some great steps trying to resolve this issue. Did you check for updates to the display on the manufacturer website here: MSi Support

If that's not the case, let's help to narrow our focus by creating a new administrator test user account to see if the same behavior happens there. This can let us know if the issue is system-wide or only within your user account: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac - Apple Support

Keep us posted.

Take care!

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Answer 3

lazydoc08 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 16, 2022 9:16 AM in response to TammyW_03

Hi TammyW_03,

Thanks for the answer.

There are sadly no drivers for macOs for this monitor, but it is stated in the same page that this monitor is compatible with macOs.

I have created a new test user account (admin) and the issue still persists (the black levels are raised and colors are washed out), so I guess this is system wide.

As I said in my previous post, this issue is well known ( and is not limited to M1 Macs) and there is a tutorial (that didn't work for me) to force RGB output (which apparently fixes the issue).

As for using another cable (display port) the monitor does not support it and I really only have this one Hub which perfectly works with Windows.

Thanks.

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