Fix Blue Tint Wake from Screensaver Mac / Macbook

Ever wake your Mac from screensaver and find a bizarre blue tint or blueish tint to the display screen? The blue tinge can be fixed or removed by opening up Display Preferences (from System Preferences Panel, Second Row [Hardware] => Displays). Simply opening the Displays preference window reverts the color profile to the last good color profile, effectively removing the blue tinge.

UPDATE: This permanent fix does not appear to work once you’ve changed your screensaver (or perhaps at all.ย  The above solution still works.) A more permanent fix to the sporadic blue tint, which may or may not work for you , is to change the file permissions on the color profiles located in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays. Note that this directory is not within your home directory, but the “root” of your volume or hard disk. You won’t normally be able to get to this directory through Finder alone so it’s time to use the Terminal to fix this.

UPDATE 2: Permanent Workaround – Sleep Display.ย  I haven’t seen a blue tint on my Macbook Pro screen for over a year now.ย  Then again, I no longer use a screen saver, rather, I sleep my display after a few minutes of idle time.ย  This is done in System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> adjust the slider for “Put the display to sleep when the computer is inactive for: ” 10 minutes or whatever time you like.ย  Although I no longer have beautiful screensavers dancing across my screen, I also never have to open up Display Preferences to get rid of the annoying blue tint after waking from a screen saver.ย  Note: I use a “Santa Rosa” MacBook Pro which has an LED backlit screen.ย  This display instantly reaches full brightness whenever the screen turns on or wakes from sleep.ย  I could imagine this workaround being annoying for those who have flourescent tube backlit monitors/screens, which would take a minute or two to reach full brightness and operate at full colour depth.

In your Applications folder, find the Utilities folder. Apple Utilities Folder in Applications

Within Utilities is the Terminal program. Double click Terminal to launch the program.

We need to change the permissions of the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays files so lets first go to that directory by entering the following into the Terminal:

cd /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays

Next, we need to enter the command to change permissions. Enter this into Terminal:

sudo chmod 664 *

Terminal will then ask you for your password. Enter your password, hit Enter and the command will be executed.

After this, try starting your screensaver manually by opening System Preferences => Desktop & Screen Saver, clicking on the Screen Saver tab near the top middle, then clicking on the Hot Corners button at the bottom left. On the bottom right corner (or another corner of your choice), choose from the list / drop down box “Display Screen Saver”.

Click Ok then try starting the Screen Saver manually by moving your mouse into the “Hot Corner” you just created. Wake out of the Screen Saver by pressing the “fn” key (lower left hand corner of the keyboard) if you’re on a laptop or Shift if you’re on a desktop Apple. Repeat this multiple times, waiting varying lengths of time before waking out of the screensaver. Hopefully the blue tint should no longer occur after waking from the screen saver.


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24 responses to “Fix Blue Tint Wake from Screensaver Mac / Macbook”

  1. […] Rosa) tinting the entire screen blue after waking from sleep. It seems to be fairly common, and fix is reasonable simple. I hereby dub this problem the Blue Screen of Mild […]

  2. […] I found an article today where Ben Lam discusses the issue and posts a possible fix. I’ve applied the fix he […]

  3. balkce Avatar
    balkce

    Thanks, it was driving me a little crazy. The permission thing seemed to solve it for me. I also, while I was in the preference area, calibrated the LCD. I always thought the screen had this yellowish tint to it all.

  4. paxman Avatar
    paxman

    just to say thanks for this, much appreciated – been bugging me for the last year ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. btn Avatar

    Trippy. This happened to me while I was using VMware Fusion, and an iCal Event Reminder window popped up. Fortunately, opening the Displays preferences pane returned everything back to normal.

  6. Ellis Elkins Avatar

    This is the only post that I found on the net that was helpful with this topic, thanks for putting it up. I tried changing the permissions, but it didn’t keep it away completely. If I test the screen saver and get out of it repeatedly this still shows up. Any more ideas? If not, thanks anyway.

  7. Ben Lam Avatar
    Ben Lam

    Hi Ellis,

    I updated this post with a workaround: using Energy Saver – Sleep Display, rather than a screen saver. This method of “screen saving” doesn’t using moving images, rather a lack of any image. More boring, but then again it’s more environmentally friendly and doesn’t “stress” your liquid crystals (yeah, I know I’m reaching with that one).

    Best regards,

    Ben

  8. Ellis Elkins Avatar

    good idea. Thanks

  9. Ellis Elkins Avatar

    Though I do look forward to Apple fixing this.

  10. William Avatar
    William

    I used a simple shortcut to fix:
    Ctrl + Shift + Eject

    The screen will sleep, then move the mouse or press any key to wake again. The color becomes normal again.

  11. kyoryu16x Avatar
    kyoryu16x

    doing the whole terminal thing did not work and it said i was “not in the sudoers file. this incident will be reported.” .. so whats gonna happen now?
    then i tried the ctrl+shift+eject trick, which also did not work. oh and going to the displays preference pane didnt fix the blue screen either.

    any more ideas? thanks.

  12. Gurpartap Singh Avatar

    Ctrl+Shift+Eject worked for me!

  13. cwl Avatar
    cwl

    This is great, thanks. I thought my eyes were going bad because I usually notice it when coming back from lunch after having been out in the sunshine for a while!

  14. bluetint Avatar
    bluetint

    interestingly, the blue tint problem on my mac pro went away once I deleted all the third party flash cookies installed on my hard drive, permanently. You can access flash cookie controls at link below. After this I installed Ghostery to block ad tracking in Firefox. Blue tint never happened again.

    http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

    http://www.ghostery.com/

  15. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Ok I entered sudo chmod 664 * and everything was fine until the next time I turned on my computer. Now all settings have been restored to default and all my files and some programs are locked. Can’t seem to fix this…help please =(

  16. David Avatar
    David

    I have this blue tint problem on my ipod touch. at first it only turned blue randomly on wake up but now its completely blue all the time. I have found nothing about this on any site. any help?

  17. Shannon Avatar
    Shannon

    Wow, I thought my eyes were just tweaking out! Thanks!

  18. Jeffrey Martin Avatar

    This solution did not work for me.

    What DID work for me was what I found on another link. You open terminal and paste this command:

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DMProxy

    boom, fixed.
    I found it here –
    http://www.leyton.org/2006/09/29/macbook-pro-fixing-the-blue-tint-problem/comment-page-1/

    cheers,
    jeffrey

  19. isi gf Avatar
    isi gf

    hi david…ye the same thing happened to my ipod touch. it was on temporary at first then it just stayed tinted blue. already tryed restoring like apple store said but it didn’t work…WAT DO I DO IT DRIVING ME NUTS!!!!

  20. Rice Avatar
    Rice

    Thanks :). The blue was driving me crazy – I thought it was my vision. My MacBook (2008) wouldn’t wake up from sleep mode in the middle of my exam – freaked cuz I thought I lost all my stuff. Turns out I didn’t, but I got the blue tint glitch.

  21. kk Avatar
    kk

    Thanks! The very first quick fix worked. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Blue color showed up right when I turned the computer on. This is the first time it’s ever happened on my MacBook (2008).

  22. Kieran Avatar
    Kieran

    These solutions all seem very technical and overly complicated compared to what i did… system preferences, display, colour, then choose color LCD. The blue tint on my screen was apparently due to it being set to Adobe RGB (1998)

  23. TC Avatar
    TC

    Opened System Preferences, Hardware, Displays…. hey presto! Thank you so much.

  24. Mitch Avatar
    Mitch

    I followed the directions and it changed my permissions to my folders. So, when I rebooted my desktop went to the default and my files said they couldn’t be found. I went to the disk utility first and repaired the permissions. Then to the hard disk>User and highlighted each folder>went to file>get info> and changed the permissions back from custom to RW ect.

    What a pain this has been, it’s still blue.

    I found another article that says we’re just SOL, because apple has no intension to fix.

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