Mac Mail preview is black

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Displays, then click Color.

2. Click Calibrate.

   Display Calibrator Assistant walks you through calibrating your display, then creates a calibrated color profile.

   When the display profile is ready, it’s automatically assigned as your display’s color profile.

macOS Sierra: Calibrate your display
You mentioned that you're running macOS 10.13. Have you updated to 10.13.1 yet? This update doesn't necessarily include a fix for the specific issue you're experiencing, but it's always good to be running the most current software version available to ensure all of your apps run as smoothly as possible. View steps on how to update here: How to update the software on your Mac. Test out Mail in a new user account and in safe mode using the steps we previously provided if the issue persists, and let us know what the results are.
Cheers!

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

Same problem here. I have an early 2011 15" MBP and it shows those black boxes in the mail preview too. I was calibrating the display when I bought the Mac to fit to my color profile for photo edits on my external monitor. With this profile the black boxes appear. But when I switch to the profile provided by Apple for the display they disappear. But this profile is far off with its colors. Returning to that is no option for me. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the reply, DrBillC.

I had a friend with the same problem but wanted to wait for your reply before giving her the solution. She has a MBP with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 and also a Samsung external monitor. I gave her the solution and she disconnected the monitor from the MBP and calibrated the display, and it worked! However, when she connected the external monitor the black area came back in Mail. She calibrated the Samsung display and Mail was corrected. All is good now.

It will be interesting to see if Apple spends the resources necessary to fix this bug in those old models of Macs.

Thanks again for your reply, and for this post.

Yes, as you've seen there is a bug with some display/color profiles in Mac Mail. I'm using a custom calibrated color profile that validates fine and works in other Apple color managed applications (Preview, Photos, etc), but mail preview goes black.

If your MBP has dual video GPUs you can also try going into "System Preferences > Energy Saver" and un-select "Automatic graphics switching" as another potential work around. That works for me with my custom profile on a MBP 17" 2011 for now.

Hopefully they will fix this. It *seems* there is some bug with color profiles that use matrix entries and the integrated GPU. Just a guess from what I've seen.

-James

Hi James,

that corresponds with my latest findings. It seems that when I have connected my MBP to the external monitor the boxes do not appear. As the dedicated GPU is used in this case there seems to be a problem with the integrated Intel GPU and my color profiles. By the way, did you also have crashes of the Window Server from time to time when the integrated GPU is used with the color profiles? I don't know if this is related to this or another problem.

Best Carsten

I haven't noticed any Window Server crashes, but to be honest my MBP has only been on High Sierra for about a week and a half now, and the profile I'm using is literally days old. It's also not my main system, so it doesn't get as much use.

I use DisplayCAL/Argyll with an Eye One Display 2 for display calibration. The sad thing is that I had to create two profiles from it. The first/original is a more accurate profile (which is also more sophisticated) but runs into another Apple bug that completely crushes blacks in Preview, Quick View, etc. The second profile is a more simplistic matrix version which gets around that Apple bug, but has trouble with Mail using Intel GPU. Yet the more sophisticated original works fine in Mail. Can't win, go figure. 😉

Hopefully their display team looks into some of these issues. Profile support used to be strong, but seems to be slipping IMO.

-James

System Preferences.app->DIsplay->Color->Calibrate...

Calibrate Your display.
I had same issue. Calibration helped me

It's been a couple of days. Did calibrating the display work for you?

After update to High Sierra , I encountered the same behaviour. The calibrate your display option has solved the issue.