Custom Display Presets deleted after OS update

Mac os26.3 update deleted my custom display presets (made previously using a Calibrite profiler). How do I get them back? Or do I need to recalibrate my screen? (Very annoying).

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.3

Posted on Feb 13, 2026 6:10 PM

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Posted on Jul 2, 2026 5:55 AM

If this actually fixes the problem, Apple owes me a Mac Studio M5 Max :)


BEWARE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THESE CODES ARE DOING AND WHY IT FIXED MY PROBLEM, BUT YEA PLEASE DO IT WITH CAUTION


So I've been having this problem since forever, basically I bought a used M1 Max MBP 16 inch mid March this year and because I'm a hobby content creator, I want to have a properly set monitor. And then the preset is poof just gone after every restart / shut down, so the past months I've been trying my best to just sleep the laptop.


Long story short, I found this thread and hoped that updates would eventually fixes it, but yea as we see so far, nothing is fixed, so I put the problem into Gemini, telling how can I find an alternative way to fix this, I was thinking of using the "HDR Video P3-ST 2084" preset and fine tune it to 120nits, because that would be my personal preference, and also I told Gemini, about the problem that after every restart, it would remove the "non-native" presets.


And Gemini told me to do this:


Workaround 2: Flush the Corrupted WindowServer Plists The underlying reason this bug occurs specifically on your machine while skipping others is often down to permission conflicts or corruption inside the system’s cache files. You can force macOS to regenerate the display persistence layer from scratch by wiping the preference files via Terminal. Open Terminal and execute the following two commands to kill the broken preference caches:


# Deletes user-specific display configuration
rm ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist

# Deletes system-wide display configuration (Requires admin password)
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
Crucial Step: Immediately restart your Mac after running these commands. The OS will recreate clean, uncorrupted preference trees upon boot. Set your custom 120-nit Rec. 709 mode after this flush, and test if the persistence holds through a subsequent restart.


After that there was an error telling that "No such file or directory" for the 2nd command, and Gemini told me the following:


# Deletes user-level display configurations
rm ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist

# Deletes the modern system-wide display configuration file (Requires admin password)
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.displays.plist


After doing those two, I just restarted my computer, set the custom display preset and restart my MBP again to check if the display preset got removed or not, but this actually fixed it. I even shutdown my MBP and turn it on and the custom preset is still there. So this fixed the problem.


If my deduction is correct, there is somewhere in the .plist file that is causing this bug, the fact that this problem persists beyond updates, means that the apple devs can't seem to find the problem, and the setting was something on the higher level, that the OS doesn't really touch on each update. By resetting the .plist files, we essentially remove all the bugged settings and force the OS to generate a new one, and thus by random chance fixes the bug.


TL;DR


  • Run the 4 commands above
  • Restart the mac
  • Make a custom preset
  • Restart the mac
  • If the custom preset is still there, then shut down your mac
  • If the custom preset is still there after you turn it on again, you fixed the bug
59 replies

Apr 5, 2026 5:55 PM in response to Ben Guthrie

Ben Guthrie wrote:

Hi lastcoyote,

Yeah, I've exported my custom preset. Regardless, I no longer have any problem with the display presets. Everything's been working fine at my end since the last two OS updates.

Interesting. I wonder if it’s because what you’ve done is fine tuned one of the original ‘Reference’ presets and using that rather than actually adding a new custom named preset that gets shown in the list below the reference presets. It’s these newly added custom presets that are getting deleted on restart for many still. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s all I can think could be the difference.


Custom Display Presets deleted after OS update

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