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.  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.  I haven’t seen a blue tint on my Macbook Pro screen for over a year now.  Then again, I no longer use a screen saver, rather, I sleep my display after a few minutes of idle time.  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.  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.  Note: I use a “Santa Rosa” MacBook Pro which has an LED backlit screen.  This display instantly reaches full brightness whenever the screen turns on or wakes from sleep.  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.

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.

Related posts:

1. MacBook Longer Battery Life Tip
2. Can’t Wake MacBook Pro from Sleep
3. Turn off Macbook Pro Display When Using External Display