Built-in display shows colorful posterized garbage on wake after long display sleep (MacBook Pro, BetterDisplay running)

[fateevd]

Environment

• Mac: MacBook Pro [14"/16"], M5 Pro
• macOS: Tahoe 26.7 — also reproduced on the previous version before updating
• BetterDisplay: [version], [Free/Pro]
• External displays: [none / model]
• Custom color profiles / color table adjustments: [enabled / disabled]

Description
After the built-in display has been off for a while (locked screen, ~5–10 minutes), waking it shows heavily corrupted colors: smooth gradients (wallpaper) turn into psychedelic rainbow banding, while white UI elements (clock, username, "Touch ID or password" text) remain sharp and correct. Looks like a corrupted gamma / color table rather than framebuffer corruption. Photo attached.

Steps to reproduce

1. BetterDisplay running.
2. Lock the Mac and leave it until the display turns off (or set brightness to minimum so the panel turns off).
3. Wait ~5–10 minutes.
4. Wake the display.

Short off/on cycles (a few seconds) do NOT reproduce it — only longer display sleep does.

Expected: normal image on wake.
Actual: colorful posterized garbage on the whole wallpaper; a restart clears it.

Isolation

• Reproduces with the default Apple wallpaper (not image-specific).
• Reproduces after updating macOS.
• With BetterDisplay quit, the issue does NOT occur.
• With color table adjustments disabled: [result]

Possibly related

• The night before, the Mac froze while going to sleep: Bluetooth headphones kept looping the last audio chunk, and the screen showed colorful garbage when the lid was opened. Hard restart required. Not sure if related.
• Similar reports: Black screen on wake from time-to-time with custom color profiles (fix: disable color table adjustments) #4607, Display may show black screen on wake when custom color profiles are installed and color table control is being used #5780

Attachments

• Photo of the lock screen
• Logs: [output of log show for WindowServer / BetterDisplay around the event, if any]

[waydabber]

I don't think this is related to the black screen, but looks like a color profile or color table corruption issue.

XDR displays normally do not support custom color profiles (it is a hack to enable it in the app), they allow calibration through Presets. Does this happen with the factory profile and using Presets only?

Which app version are you using?

[fateevd]

I don't think this is related to the black screen, but looks like a color profile or color table corruption issue.

XDR displays normally do not support custom color profiles (it is a hack to enable it in the app), they allow calibration through Presets. Does this happen with the factory profile and using Presets only?

Which app version are you using?

Thanks for the quick reply!

BetterDisplay version: 5.0.6 (build 53700)

The built-in display uses the factory color profile with the standard Preset "Apple Display (P3-600 nits)" — no custom color profiles.

So yes, it happens with the factory profile and Presets only (same test: lock, wait ~10 min, wake).

Additional observations:

• The corruption disappears immediately when brightness is changed or when an external display is connected/turned on.
• It doesn't happen at all with BetterDisplay quit.
• Disabling "Always keep XDR software boost ready" didn't help.

[waydabber]

Hmm. The original report says this:

"Custom color profiles / color table adjustments: [enabled / disabled]"

Are you sure then that color table adjustments are disabled? The color table being updated should only happen with it enabled - and the M5 Pro/Max specifically is known to have an Apple-acknowledged GPU bug regarding this which is not fixed by Apple yet.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/819331?answerId=894330022

So this may mean that the issue is simply this:

#5217