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External Monitor Display Problems after Sleep with MacBook Air M1

Dear Community,


I have the following setup: a Mac Book Air, M1 2020, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, OSX 11.2.3, connected to a LG UltraFine 32UN880-B over the included USB 3 cable. The OS seems to have troubles displaying on the external display, after sleep (amount of time is not important) the Desktop is displayed only in a portion of the screen and the setting for HDR ist lost. The error also reflects in a screenshot. Display drawing events after the sleep get partially rendered in the "dead" space, which is inaccessible to the cursor. Please see the images attached to get a better picture of the problem. The problem can be reset if HDR and screen scaling is set to a different value.


Things I already have tried:

  • Use a different cable
  • Disable Sync Options in Monitors preferences pane
  • Try different screen scalings in Monitors preferences pane
  • Try HDR enabled/disabled in Monitors preferences pane
  • Try TrueTone enabled/disabled in Monitors preferences pane
  • Try different sleep times
  • Reinstall the Operating System


As M1 does not have an option to reset PRAM, I am out of ideas how to get this problem solved. Any ideas from the community?


Yours sincerely, Julian.



MacBook

Posted on Mar 12, 2021 12:36 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 18, 2021 4:52 AM

Dear Community,


I was able to solve this problem with the following steps:


Go to: /Library/Preferences/

Delete files: com.apple.windowserver.plist and com.apple.windowserver.displays.plist


Go to: ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/

Delete files: com.apple.windowserver.XXXXXXXX.plist and com.apple.windowserver.displays.XXXXXXXXXX.plist


Empty trash. Restart.


In Screen Preference Panel disable HDR for the external display.

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5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 18, 2021 4:52 AM in response to Julian.

Dear Community,


I was able to solve this problem with the following steps:


Go to: /Library/Preferences/

Delete files: com.apple.windowserver.plist and com.apple.windowserver.displays.plist


Go to: ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/

Delete files: com.apple.windowserver.XXXXXXXX.plist and com.apple.windowserver.displays.XXXXXXXXXX.plist


Empty trash. Restart.


In Screen Preference Panel disable HDR for the external display.

Mar 14, 2021 10:28 AM in response to Julian.

Greetings, Julian!


Welcome to Apple Support Communities! If we understand correctly, you're running into an issue with your external display when you wake from sleep. We can see why you want information on that. It looks like you have tried some great steps up to this point. When you have a moment, you may also want to look over and follow the steps on this page: Get help with video issues on external displays connected to your Mac.


We hope this information helps you out.


All the best.

External Monitor Display Problems after Sleep with MacBook Air M1

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