After disconnecting TV, built-in screen settings are messed up

[dannyyy]

I recently installed BetterDisplay to optimize one of my older external 27" displays (HDMI). This works as expected.

Today I connected a 4k TV to my MacBook Pro 14" Late 2021 with HDMI. As often with Apple products, this was actually not working. My MacBook Pro recognized the external display, and I was able to chose whether to mirror or extent and to adjust the resolution. But at the end, the Samsung TV never got a signal.

Nevertheless I thought, and disconnected the HDMI cable. After that, my MacBook Pro display preferences were fully messed up. I'm used to using the "Default" or "More Space" resolution. But after disconnecting this was not possible any more.

As you can see on the animated image, something really went wrong. I'm afraid that BetterDisplay did something in the background. I haven't had such a resolution mess ever before. Even the external screen was not usable.

Maybe, someone knows how I can hard reset the display settings to Apple's default. Using BetterDisplay's reset function does nothing.

[waydabber]

You should disable the native smooth scaling for the built-in screen "Color LCD" under BetterDisplay's Settings/Displays. This should make the System Preferences page look ok however you won't be able to use the flexible scaling option with BetterDisplay's resolution slider.

If you did reset BetterDisplay, the display configuration files are still there unaffected, however the fact that there is a custom configuration was wiped from BetterDisplay's configuration files so as far as BetterDisplay thinks, the system configuration alterations were created manually or by an other app. To fix this you can simply re-enable Edit and manage the system configuration of this display for the built in display, apply the settings and then configure things the way you wanted (enable or disable smooth scaling).

[dannyyy]

@waydabber Thank you very much. I followed your instructions and was able to fix it.