MacBook Air M3 outputs different colour formats to external monitors, RGB, YCbCr

RGB vs. YCbCr usually comes up in the context of HDMI – where it's common for HDMI monitors to use RGB, and for HDMI TVs to use YCbCr. In the Intel Mac days, you'd see occasional posts by people who had Macs that had misidentified the color representation the HDMI monitor or TV wanted, resulting in unwanted color shifts.

I'm surprised to see that come up in the case of identical monitors connected via USB-C (DP) to USB-C (DP).

Have you checked the settings on your Dell monitors? I have the same Dell monitor (U2723QE), and playing with the monitor's menus just now, I saw this:

• Click the "joystick" button on the back of the right hand side of the monitor
• Push the button up to get the (Dell) UltraSharp 27 monitor menu
• Select Color
• Select Input Color Format
• The monitor will offer you a choice of RGB and YCbCr and show you which is selected

If one of your monitors has YCbCr selected, it is possible that it is reporting that to the Mac as the preferred color representation, and that the Mac is simply accepting the request.

You can try changing the color mode with the app BetterDisplay from YCbCr to RGB, maybe that works. The latest v3 version has this feature (for free) for Apple Silicon.

In Settings->Displays, make sure both displays are set to an RGB Color Profile.

That's really strange.

I would have expected the second monitor to get fewer Retina scaling options. (The maximum resolutions are 6K for the first monitor, and 5K for the second – and those seem to apply to the internal drawing canvas.). But not to be receiving a signal with a different color representation.

You may want to contact Apple Support and/or Dell Support.

Are you plugging the monitors into different USB-C ports on the MacBook Air – not daisy-chaining them?

Did you ever resolve this? I have the same issue, M3 Air and two Dell U2723QE displays connected directly to the MacBook.

Hi,

I have exactly the same issue and behaviour with my two U2723QE screen.

Same results trough a docking station (Ivanky) and no daisy chain.

Did you try other solution?

Thanks