MacBook Pro M5 Retina display colors off after waking from sleep with calibration

On the 1st of September 2026, less than two weeks ago, I bought myself my first Mac ever. It's a 16 inch Macbook Pro M5. I live in Sweden, I am 55 years old and have worked more or less my entire life as a developer. First on Unix and then on Windows/WSL, until now. As I have photography as a strong hobby, I love editing images, which I always do on calibrated displays, which I assumed would not become an issue on the builtin Retina display of my new Macbook Pro M5.


I own a Datacolor SpyderPro (2024) calibration device and have to the point followed the clear instructions for monitor calibration on my Macbook as provided on this page. I have, as described, turned off True Tone and any other automatic color adjustments on the Mac that could interfere with the Spyder Utility color management and so far so good.


The problem that I am facing is that if I leave the computer for a while so that the Retina display goes to sleep, in about 70% of the cases when I shake the mouse to wakeup the display again, suddenly the colors are completely off. They are either all the way to a very strong green tint, or sometimes so pink and purple that I am unable to read anything from the screen and I am forced to restart the machine. I have already reset my computer from scratch twice on MacOS 26.6.2 and yesterday I got so desperate I also made a try with the current MacOS 27 RC. Nothing has not helped.


I have searched the web a lot and apparently this is a known issue that theoretically can occur as conflicts between the Mac's builtin color management and Datacolor's Sypder Utility. I have tried all the suggested workarounds without getting rid of my problem. Needless to say, after paying around 3300 USD for a machine of this caliber, my initial experience with a Macbook is far from optimal. Not only is this frustrating. I am really disappointed.


Anybody here that has gone through something similar and might have some advice. Is this something that only could be software-related or could it be so that there simply is something wrong with my machine and I should have it sent in under warranty?


Any ideas around this issue would be highly appreciated. Thanks!



Posted on Sep 12, 2026 4:49 AM

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7 replies

Sep 13, 2026 3:04 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hello and thank you for your reply. In my original article I wrote "have to the point followed the clear instructions for monitor calibration on my Macbook as provided on this page", so that I would not have to mention each step of that article and end up repeating it all here. 😉


So yes, I have performed that step as the article describes that failing to do so will lead to conflicts in profile handling. Even if I have performed that crucial step, I still get conflicts on my machine around which profile is used after the display wakes up after going idle. To say the least, it's quite frustrating after hearing so much people mention that on a Mac "things just work". 😆



MacBook Pro M5 Retina display colors off after waking from sleep with calibration

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