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Can't disable Night Shift on External Monitor

J

JoshuaA

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 1, 2010
40
7
I have a rMBP15 Mid 2014 that had a clean reformat to 10.12.3 last month, then upgraded to 10.12.4 when it came out. I have a Philips BDM4065UC 40" 4K display connected via MiniDP 1.2.

I have Night Shift disabled (set to Off in Display Settings). However, every time the display goes to sleep, the resolution changes, or the Display Arrangement is modified in any way, the the monitor color changes as if Night Shift enabled on just the external monitor, despite the setting not being changed (and staying on "Off"). The internal LCD is not affected in any way, and behaves normally as it should. I have tried setting the Schedule to all 3 settings, with no improvements.

To fix it, I have to manually turn Night Shift on, then turn it back off every time my display goes to sleep (which happens quite often during the work day). It is highly annoying and counterproductive. I have tried restarting things, clearing PRAM, and all the standard troubleshooters, but none of those have helped.

Interestingly, if I connect the same monitor over HDMI 1.4, the bug doesn't manifest itself at all. In fact, Night Shift seems completely disabled over HDMI even if I manually toggle it on. However, I can't use HDMI 1.4 because it doesn't support 4K@60Hz.

Does anyone else with an external monitor have this problem? Is there a solution to this bug, or a better way of dealing with this bug? I couldn't find any other people with this problem, so I'm a bit stumped.

Thanks for reading.
 
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I've got the same Philips screen and I'm experiencing the same problem. It is now impossible for me to use my MacBook in closed clamshell mode as switching to external screen now enables Night Shift on it, and since there are no controls for the internal display in this mode, there are no controls for Night Shift at all.
Switching to the MacBook Pro display for now I guess, I need to work on some graphics.
This is incredibly frustrating.
 
I was going to ask if the Notification Center shortcut would still work, but I tried it myself. Sure enough, in clamshell, it completely does remove all controls for Night Shift everywhere! This is ridiculous, indeed.

Well, I have my external monitor on Extend mode, so I can still make use of both monitors properly, as long as I don't let it go to sleep. This really needs to be fixed...

Does anyone know if the new beta fixes any of this? I'm tempted to jump on that if it fixes this issue...
 
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Interestingly enough, I borrowed my daughter's Dell U2412 using my same MiniDP cable that I use on my 40", and it doesn't exhibit this behavior. Night Shift only enables when I toggle it on. Just another data point.

It seems as if it's just because it was plugged in when it was upgraded to 12.4 initially, maybe? I wonder if there's some preference for the monitor I can wipe that will fix it? I'll have to experiment to see what I can do, I guess.
 
I'm not sure I want to mess with kexts on my work MacBook Pro, so I'll leave that be for now.

A few more data points:

1. I tried wiping out my ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist and
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist to see if it would help clear up any odd cached settings, but that solved nothing.

2. I connected my personal 2016 MacBook 12 using a USB-C to DisplayPort Alt Mode cable to my 40" monitor, and that is also affected by the same Night Shift bug, despite never having connected it before (confirms that macOS 10.12.4 upgrade didn't corrupt some setting).

3. I connected the same MB12 to the same monitor using the Apple USB-C Multi adapter via HDMI, and it did not have any problems.

4. I used the same USB-C cable (as #2 above) to connect my MB12 to my daughter's Dell U2412, and it didn't have any problems there (which is the same observation as my rMB15).

So it isn't tied to the OS/settings, Mac Model, or DP cable. Based on that, I'm guessing that it's either tied to specific monitor models, and possibly their DisplayPort implementation.
 
Just checking in after installing 10.12.5 update. Night shift behaviour stays the same for me. Has anybody been able to solve this yet? Is this a bug we can report to Apple?

I'm seriously considering to sell my Philips 40" screen. It has always been too much of a compromise for me and with this bug on top it's now unusable for any graphics-related job on Macs.
 
I've tested it on both my 2016 MacBook 12 and 2016 MacBook Pro 13 over DP1.2, and the bugs still persist. It's just become daily routine to enable + disable Night Shift every time I wake up my MacBooks.

I've always hated my Philips 40", but reluctantly have kept it. I did buy a LG 27UD58 to try replacing it. It certainly didn't have the Night Shift bug, but out of the 3 units I bought, I couldn't get any that didn't have a serious defect, so I've returned them and am back to using the Philips again until a decent USB-C monitor comes out for an acceptable price.

I don't know the first thing about reporting this to Apple... couldn't readily find something at a glance, so I guess I'll have to delve deeper.
 
Doesn't seem to be related to DisplayPort. I have this issue on another machine with 3 Dell U2415 monitors. One is connected via DVI, one via HDMI, and one via DP. All exhibit this issue, even with the DP disconnected. For whatever reason the issue doesn't appear when the same monitor is plugged into a 2015 rMBP.
 
I have same problem on MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro with MacOS 12.1. Phillips TV connected to laptop via internal HDMI port. So if nightshift turned on Mac display and then I connect TV, it shows night-shifted picture. And disabling Nightshift in settings or control panel doesnt affect to TV picture. Anyone else here with same problem?
 
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d3nisov said:
I have same problem on MacBook Pro 16 M1 Pro with MacOS 12.1. Phillips TV connected to laptop via internal HDMI port. So if nightshift turned on Mac display and then I connect TV, it shows night-shifted picture. And disabling Nightshift in settings or control panel doesnt affect to TV picture. Anyone else here with same problem?
Click to expand...
I have. It seems this issue does not affect all devices, because I have a relatively old panasonic TV and like you, on Macbook Pro 2021 Macos 12.3 the issue is still present. But with my DELL monitor, everything seems to be alright. Rebooting fixes the issue temporarily.
 
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