Black screen on wake from time-to-time with custom color profiles (fix: disable color table adjustments)

[akashkashyap]

This just started happening yesterday, 8/25/2025, on a 2021 Macbook Pro 16in w/ M1 Max running Sequoia 15.6.1 (24G90) (Latest).

I am experiencing this at least 75% of the time when waking the laptop from sleep. Happens both when waking from sleep caused by lack of use while laptop was open, and when waking from sleep by opening lid when laptop is closed. Happens whether I am plugged into a dock or not, doesn't appear to affect anything. Restart did not help.

It is purely a display issue, if there was audio playing when it went to sleep and I open the laptop back up the audio will start playing again - it's only the display that stays black. The only thing that works is force restarting the entire machine very time this happens.

I am pretty sure BetterDisplay is the culprit after some investigation. Here is an example from the latest system logs:

❯ pmset -g log | grep -Ei "Sleep|Wake" | tail -n 100
...
2025-08-26 06:32:24 -0700 Assertions PID 2155(BetterDisplay) Created PreventSystemSleep "Prevent system sleep during an operation" 00:00:00 id:0x0x7000082e7 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]
2025-08-26 06:32:24 -0700 Assertions PID 2155(BetterDisplay) ClientDied PreventSystemSleep "Prevent system sleep during an operation" 00:00:00 id:0x0x7000082e7 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]
...

If I disable BetterDisplay I no longer experience the issue.

Happy to share are anything else that will help with debugging.

[waydabber]

Hi there,

some questions:

• Is this for the built-in display?
• Do you have any other displays connected?
• Are you using any other app that might interfere with display colors or does this issue correlate with any app or system upgrade or new app installation?
• How long have you been using the app?
• Do you have this issue if you turn off "Enable software-based video adjustments" under the display's app Settings pane tab (under Video Control Settings)?

The power management assertions are normal, they are there after any display configuration operation for about 10 seconds and should not interfere with display brightness.

[akashkashyap]

1. Yes, for the built in display.
2. Happens both in the case where I have external displays connected via a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Pro Dock, and also in the case when I have no external displays connected to the laptop.
3. I'm not using any other app like that.
4. I have been using the app for 2+ years now.
5. I haven't tried turning off "Enable software-based video adjustments". Just disabled it, I will let you know if the issue appears to persist or not.

It doesn't appear to be a brightness issue, because the brightness buttons don't do anything once it goes into this state. The entire display just goes black, as if it was disconnected entirely from the system. Keyboard/mouse presses do nothing, I have to just restart the entire laptop to get it to work.

[waydabber]

Did you update anything (app or the system) lately? Or this is just coming from nowhere?

You can try resetting the app and the system display subsystem. Maybe something just went wrong which happens with a complex system from time-to-time.

https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/wiki/Safe-mode,-app-reset,-app-removal

[akashkashyap]

I hadn't updated the app or the system lately, it seems like it just came out of nowhere.

After turning off "Enable software-based video adjustments" I haven't seen the issue for the past ~24 hours. It's not ideal, but it does seem like it worked.

I'll try doing a hard reset on the app using your script on that link and then reinstall the app. Will let you know if I continue seeing the issue after that.

[waydabber]

You should also try using the reset the display system settings stuff, maybe that helps as well.

[akashkashyap]

Ok, I've done that as well. I'll update if I see any issues again.

[BijornCoote]

I have the same issue M1 Air.

[waydabber]

Ok, if the issue is related to the custom color profile, you need to disable color table adjustment features for the display (this provides advanced image adjustments and software dimming). This is due to a longstanding macOS ColorSync related bug.

[BijornCoote]

I'll give it a try but it's a problem on the built-in display, macbook m1. I only noticed it after enabling software based video adjustments so it makes sense.
Weirdly, deleting the sleepimage reduces the frequency of the issue.

[mwhrtin]

Jumping in here, I'm seeing a similar issue on my M1 mini.

I've been using my setup for about two years without problems. I have two identical monitors connected to a Mac mini M1 and a MacBook Pro M1 Pro, and I use BetterDisplay CLI to switch inputs via DDC commands. I switch inputs several times a day (always both monitors at the same time) and it has always worked flawlessly, but about one or two weeks ago the M1 mini started having issues when changing inputs.

Switching to the M1 mini now takes up to 10 seconds, with both displays blinking to black several times. Sometimes one screen ends up with a reddish tint, but more often one or both stay black after the process. The M1 Pro still switches instantly every time and doesn't have any issues.

• I use custom color profiles with "colour table adjustments" enabled for hardware dimming.
• M1 Pro: Sequoia 15.6.1 (updated from 15.4.1 on Sept 12, 2025)
• Mac mini M1: Sequoia 15.5 (updated June 6, 2025)
• BetterDisplay 4.0.4 (45613)

I haven't changed or installed anything on the M1 mini for months, the only update is BetterDisplay 4.0.4 which was installed on September 8, 2025. It's possible the issues started right after that update and I didn't notice. Disabling "colour table adjustments" shortens the switching process and reduces flickering, perhaps even resolves the issue altogether, but I need it enabled to perform hardware dimming. Notable is that the M1 Pro also has "colour table adjustments" enabled without these issues.

As a temporary workaround, I added a script that reapplies color profiles whenever the input switches back to the M1 mini. It makes the process slightly longer but improves the success rate somewhat, but it still fails quite often. As a backup workaround I also set up a keyboard shortcut to manually reapply the profiles if the screens stay black, so I can reinitialize the displays without being stuck with no image.

I'll update the M1 mini to Sequoia 15.7.1 to see if that helps. If not, I might jump to Tahoe 26.0.1.

[waydabber]

You can try resetting display settings (under Settings/Displays/Overview/Reset All…), maybe something got messed up somehow.

[mwhrtin]

I think your suggestion actually worked, thanks!

After some initial testing, switching to the Mac mini M1 feels just as fast as before. The long wake process with multiple blinks that used to take nearly 10 seconds is gone, and so far I haven't ended up with any black screens. Hopefully that means there's no longer any need for the color profile workaround.

It's still a bit slower compared to the MacBook Pro M1 Pro when switching to it, but that might be because the MacBook always has its internal display active or simply due to its beefier specs.

Edit: Spoke too soon. One of the screens stayed black again when I switched inputs, so the keyboard shortcut to reapply the color profile still comes in handy. But at least the process of initializing the displays is still much faster than it was before I did the reset.

[stamnas]

Following. I experience this exact issue on my Macbook Air M2, all the time.

Was having the issue at v1.x; updated to 3.x, persisted, updated to 4.x today, persisted.

[waydabber]

Black meaning you have an image/backlight on your screen but the image is blank?

Do you have this issue when the app is not running? Are you using a custom color profile?

[stamnas]

Yes, image/backlight on screen but the image is blank.

there are also a handful of these instances where the mac completely shuts down (crashes unexpectedly), but there is no predictable pattern to this.

yes, custom colour profile.

[waydabber]

Some custom color profiles do not work properly (due to a macOS bug with colorsync or corrupt color profile data). I recommend using the factory profile created by the OS or one of the pre-installed color profiles - or alternatively turn off "Allow color table adjustments" in the app to avoid having the black screen issue.

[mohammadazeemwani]

I am experiencing the same issue:
My external monitor: BenQ MA270, which I use as main monitor.

When waking from sleep, the built-in monitor which I use as secondary monitor, wakes perfectly up and functions as a normal secondary monitor would.
The BenQ monitor however just shows a big blank screen. The only way till now I have found to fix this is replugging the monitor cable back into my macbook.

The issue is only with better display, not with lunar pro or display pilot 2.

[waydabber]

Are you using a custom macOS color profile for this display and image adjustments (or software dimming) at the same time? If so, this is a known color profile bug. I recommend using the factory profile created by macOS for the display or disabling color table adjustments for the display in the app.

[timdmackey]

I'm having the same issue, how can I go about diagnosing this? As far as I can tell I have image adjustments turned off on the virtual display, and I even tried turning the virtual display off last night before i put my displays to sleep (I'm on a Mac Studio)

For context, this issue has started recently since setting up a virtual display to share to a second computer. I've been working on a personal fork of Deskreen to stream the virtual desktop. When I wake my displays in the morning, my main display is black and I have to force restart. Sometimes if I wait long enough (a minute plus) the login prompt will eventually show, but when I log back in all my applications relaunch because the system logged me out.

To be safe, last night I disabled my virtual screen in BetterDisplay before putting my displays to sleep, and this morning I still got a black screen. It was only 15 seconds this time before seeing the login prompt, but I still was completely logged out and my applications had to relaunch.

After digging into the crash logs it appears WindowServer is crashing each time. The main thread hangs and the system eventually kills it.

Here's a summary of the information I have currently, this is from the most recent crash with the virtual screen disabled:

System Info

• Mac Studio (Mac13,1)
• macOS Sequoia 15.6.1
• BetterDisplay 4.1.1

Spin dump

/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/WindowServer_2026-01-07-131118_Mac-Studio.userspace_watchdog_timeout.spin

Reason:           (1 monitored services unresponsive): checkin with service: 
WindowServer (0 induced crashes) returned not alive with context: 
unresponsive work processor(s): 
WindowServer main thread  40 seconds since last successful checkin, 5112 total successful checkins

Command:          WindowServer
Path:             /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/Resources/WindowServer
Codesigning ID:   com.apple.WindowServer
Architecture:     arm64e
PID:              164
Time Since Fork:  51181s

Call stack from the hung WindowServer thread:

Thread 0xbda    DispatchQueue "com.apple.main-thread"(1)    Thread name "ws_main_thread"    
12 samples (1-12)    priority 79 (base 79)    cpu time 5.536s
  12  ??? (SkyLight + 572332) [0x18d01ebac] 1-12
    12  ??? (SkyLight + 3078688) [0x18d282a20] 1-12
      12  ??? (SkyLight + 3079384) [0x18d282cd8] 1-12
        12  ??? (SkyLight + 1936508) [0x18d16bc7c] 1-12
          12  ??? (SkyLight + 3061248) [0x18d27e600] 1-12
            12  ??? (SkyLight + 2065964) [0x18d18b62c] 1-12
              ...
                10  ??? (SkyLight + 240392) [0x18cfcdb08] 1-10
                  10  ??? (SkyLight + 1125212) [0x18d0a5b5c] 1-10
                    1  ??? (SkyLight + 242228) [0x18cfce234] (running)
                    ...

BetterDisplay's VirtualDisplayListener appears to have been active:

Process:          BetterDisplay [3600]
Path:             /Applications/BetterDisplay.app/Contents/MacOS/BetterDisplay
Identifier:       pro.betterdisplay.BetterDisplay
    12  ??? (BetterDisplay + 10824) [0x10202aa48] 1-12
  Thread 0x5998    DispatchQueue "com.apple.VirtualDisplayListener"(576)    12 samples (1-12)    priority 46 (base 46)
      12  ??? (BetterDisplay + 10697220) [0x102a5ba04] 1-12
      12  ??? (BetterDisplay + 10610532) [0x102a46764] 1-12
      12  ??? (BetterDisplay + 10610576) [0x102a46790] 1-12

I can share the full .spin files from the crashes if that would be helpful.

[timdmackey]

Are you using a custom macOS color profile for this display and image adjustments (or software dimming) at the same time? If so, this is a known color profile bug. I recommend using the factory profile created by macOS for the display or disabling color table adjustments for the display in the app.

I read this before, but it just occurred to me that this could be affecting my main display as well. I checked the settings and noticed that Enable software-based image adjustments was turned on. I'm not sure if I turned this on recently or not. I've turned it off and will continue monitoring to see if I keep having this issue.

[timdmackey]

Fingers crossed 🤞, but I think the issue may have been my main display accidentally having software adjustments turned on. Since turning it off, the issue hasn't come up again.

I wonder if it's possible to detect this configuration conflict with color profiles and show a warning when enabling software-based image adjustments? This is a really insidious MacOS bug and when it happens it's not at all obvious what the cause is.

[waydabber]

It's really difficult - normally custom color profiles should not cause an issue, but there are certain profiles that do seem to trigger this effect from time to time (other apps that use color table adjustments suffer from this). Most people think everything is all right, and there is no obvious software facing feedback from the system that the GPU driver is having difficulties and is actually outputting black - from a software perspective everything looks fine.

[dkoo761]

Hi there, I've been struggling with the black screen 75% issue for the past couple weeks and just discovered that it's this same issue that's causing it.

I recently bought a BenQ MA270U monitor specifically designed for Macs with.....you guessed it....custom color profiles. That's actually the main selling point of this monitor is that they created perfect color profiles to mimic every single MBP display, so you choose your MBP in the color profile list and you get amazingly accurate color matching (which I can concur is great) but you also get the black screen on wake issue. Even "reinitialize display" in BD will cause the external display to go black most of the time. Specifically, the backlight of the display stays on but there is no image, as if the brightness were turned down to 0. Display is still recognized by Mac the whole time. Disconnecting the display for at least 10 seconds and reconnecting it usually fixes it.

Solution as mentioned above is to either not use the custom color profile or turn off "Enable color table adjustments" in BD. I did the latter and am finally breathing a sign of relief. In case it helps, I also turned off "Enable DCC Control".

Hopefully anyone else who searches for BenQ or MA270U will find this post (and the great debugging job you guys did above!).

[mohammadazeemwani]

I bought same monitor too recently.
Will give it a try.
Btw, I switched to Display Buddy altogether and it is be best I found (not for features, but for contorls like sync and all)

[waydabber]

This custom color profile induced black screen problem is a universal macOS issue. I am not familiar with DisplayBuddy, so I don't know whether it can do additional color table based software adjustments besides DDC control - if so, then the issue should happen the same with certain color profiles. This issue plagues f.lux, Lunar, MonitorControl and other similar popular apps as well.

One can switch to overlay dimming or Metal based adjustments in BetterDisplay to work around this. But imho it's best to keep using the factory color profile (which macOS creates based on colorimetry data found in the EDID) and use the display's hardware controls to adjust the image if needed.

[R-Bower]

Found this thread after a few days of debugging. I've had a black screen out of sleep consistently since upgrading from MacOS 15.6 to 26.2. The machine is on, it's just as if the internal display is completely off. The keyboard backlight is also off. I have to hard reset and reboot in order to turn it back on. M4 Max. I've confirmed that resetting my display settings and quitting BetterDisplay solves the issue.

Fwiw, I didn't have this issue on 15.6. I primarily use BetterDisplay for Flexible Scaling on my internal display, and set a custom scaled resolution in between the default and the largest scaled resolution. I currently run 1866x1206 (108%). I don't use an external display.

Solution as mentioned above is to either not use the custom color profile or turn off "Enable color table adjustments" in BD. I did the latter and am finally breathing a sign of relief. In case it helps, I also turned off "Enable DCC Control".

I've disabled Enable color table adjustments and the brightness settings, will report back after some testing.

[R-Bower]

Promising results so far. Haven't seen an issue yet since disabling the color table feature, and I've woken it up from sleep about 4 times so far.

[waydabber]

Do you have a custom color profile?