Black or white screen when a custom ICC profile created by SpyderX is applied while using colortable manipulation

[bdgith]

Hi,
I've bought BetterDisplay the other for my Macbook air M2.
It's working fine in order to get a custom screen resolution and adjust the contrast, the only problem for me is, when coming back form sleep opening the lid, the screen sometimes just get completely white, having to reboot…
If BetterDisplay isn't running, this behaviour doesn't occur.
Thanks for your help.

[waydabber]

Hmm. If you reset the app and don't touch the contrast slider from that point on, does this happen? If not, then if you change the contrast, does the issue reappear?

[bdgith]

Thanks, I'll give it a try and let you know.
I've just opened the lid, no white screen, went to "Reset Color Adjustments" and the screen went completely black.
I've reseted the app to default…

[bdgith]

Yes, it seems that without any "image adjustments" there is no such behavior and it comes back from sleep without issue

[waydabber]

Nice, thanks for the reply! If you now apply any screen adjustments does the issue reemerge? Are you using the app with multiple logins/accounts running the app at the same time?

Thank you!

[bdgith]

Well, it seems that after reseting it's working as intended… no more white screens for the last 2 days!
And no, I have a single login/account.
I'll let you know! Thanks for your help!

[waydabber]

Thank you! I'll close this one but if the issue re-emerges we'll try to find it's source and reopen it!

[bdgith]

Hi again, sorry to bother, but today with the lid left open, back from sleep, black screen again… agggghhh!! ;-)

[waydabber]

Sorry for the delayed answer (I am on a trip with limited access). This is not good, we should get to the bottom of this. Do you have your brightness controls bound to keyboard shortcuts (or using the native keyboard brightness keys) so you can change the brightness and make the screen non-blank again?

To clarify the issue

• You have only the built-in screen present (no external display) and the built in screen is black/blank, right?
• Can you describe what black screen means - is the backlight on (so the screen gives light in a dark environment) but the screen looks blank or it does not give light at all?

Thank you!

[bdgith]

Hi! Don't worry, enjoy your trip! There is no hurry.

• I am using the native keyboard brightness keys
• no external display (macbook air m2 display)
• it sometimes get all white, or all black after sleep or opening the lid, but the backlight remains on
• the only custom settings I am using:
  • the second slider in image adjustments @ -10%
  • scalable HiDPI desktop @ 1060x1040
• I am using topnotchapp too
• I've reseted the app again, as stated in the wiki (leaving the licensing data untouched)
  Thanks!!

[bdgith]

Hi, I've stooped using topnotchapp since my last message, no more white/black screen since then…

[waydabber]

All right, it must have been topnotchapp then. I'll try to test it myself to see what might be the incompatibility between the two apps. Thanks for the feedback!

[bdgith]

Agghh… what a shame, black screens again today, 2 times coming back from sleep… I'll stop using BetterDisplay for a while and see if the problem remains…

[waydabber]

Hmm. Even without TopNotch?

This is turning out to be quite a Mystery. If you are able to log back in to your desktop (maybe using screen sharing) and use the brightness slider or color adjustment sliders, is there any change?

Can you list what other apps/utilities you are using that might be relevant, just to see if they could cause an issue?

Also, you can try disabling colortable manipulation in BD to see if that fixes things (Settings/Advanced/Colortable compatilibty mode).

[bdgith]

Hi, I might have found something…

I am using a custom colour profile (.icc) made with spyderx, I am not using TopNotch for now.

It seems like if I use the custom .icc colour profile selected in Ventura/SystemSettings/Displays/ColourProfile, if I check/uncheck "Colortable compatilibty mode" in BD several times, it will end with a full black screen.

If I use the "Colour LCD" colour profile provided by apple, check/uncheck "Colortable compatilibty mode" in BD several times, it remains stable, no black screen, does it make any sense?

Thanks!

[waydabber]

Yes, it does. Colortable control changes the gamma table which has a baseline setting that is defined by the color profile. It seems the created color profile is somehow incompatbile with the gamma table manipulation APIs of macOS (which seems to be an OS level bug). The solution is to either disable color table manipulation in BD or use a standard color table (or one that was created with the built-in calibration tool of macOS). If you send over the icc profile, I can try reproducing the issue and see if there is any workaround.

[bdgith]

Of course, here it goes.
MBA M2 230416 6-5k.icc.zip

[bdgith]

Hi,
I was wondering If you found anything about this issue?
Thanks!!!

[waydabber]

Sorry, didn't get there to test the ICC profile yet, be honest I completely forgot about it as I left the issue closed... :/ Now repoened it and will try to reproduce the issue.

Btw if you assign a shortcut to this, does it fix the issue when it arises?

[bdgith]

Don't worry, unfortunately "reset software adjustments" doesn't work when the screen has gone black…

First scenario:

• load the custom .icc profile
• tweak a bit the "image adjustments" sliders
• check/uncheck "Colortable compatibility mode" twice or so, the screen goes black

Second scenario:

• load the custom .icc profile
• tweak a bit the "image adjustments" sliders
• coming back from sleep opening the lid, it sometimes go black (or white)

It seems that if I leave the "image adjustments" untouched, to 0, the black/white screen won't happen.
Thanks for your help!

[waydabber]

Well, I can confirm that the issue happens with the attached icc profile. I am not sure about the cause though for now. What I found is the problem seems to be a generic macOS (maybe the ICC file is not fully compatible with macOS). I tested some other unrelated apps witth his profile that use gamma table manipulation (like f.lux) and they produce exactly the same issue. The black screen happens when CGDisplayRestoreColorSyncSettings() is called (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coregraphics/1454702-cgdisplayrestorecolorsyncsetting) which should reset the color table to the default recorded in the ICC profile (this is also mandatory called when an app that changed the colortable is closed).

For now I'd say the simplest solution is not to use this ICC profile, try creating a different one or if this happens with all SpyderX created profiles, maybe file a bug report to SpyderX about it (pointing out that the ICC profiles created do break all apps - like BetterDisplay, f.lux, MonitorControl etc - that use the standard gamma table APIs - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coregraphics/1456604-cgsetdisplaytransferbytable) for color manipulation.

There are some other, undocumented, low level functions to change the color table, will check if the issue comes up using those as well,

[waydabber]

(since this seems to be a generic issue, I'll move this to discussions for more visibility)

[bdgith]

Thanks, I'll try to generate another .icc with displayCal and see what happens…

I'll keep you informed.
Thanks for your help!

[bdgith]

Hi, sorry for the delay…
I finally managed to calibrate the display with displayCal, same behaviour unfortunately.

Here the .icc profile:
Display #1 2023-05-14 20-58 2.2 F-S 1xCurve+MTX.icc.zip

Thanks again!!

[waydabber]

Yeah, this seems to be a macOS level issue with custom calibrations - talked with other developers who use the gamma table API. You can alleviate this somewhat by turning this feature off:

But the issue will still happen from time-to-time. If you want to use custom ICC profiles, you might as well turn off gamma table manipulation fully by enabling this: