MacBook Pro – Fixing the Blue Tint problem
Posted by: Richard in Apple, Gadgets, TechnologyWhilst I’m very happy with my new Mac Book Pro, there are a couple of longer term gripes.
Firstly, the heat. Everybody has heard about it, but it beggars belief at times that it can get quite so hot when doing CPU intensive operations. I generally try and keep it off our new wood floor when, for example, it’s sat in the corner doing some DVD backups.
There is another problem that’s come to light, so to speak, recently. This is what I’ve loosely called “the blue tint problem”, specifically that the display takes on a light blue (some might say cyan) tint. It’s really weird, and it had me horribly worried that it was because of a loose connection in the display. I generally noticed it after opening the computer up after it was folded down, and I was beginning to think I might have to get apple care involved.
But it transpires it has a less serious cause, and a much easier solution. It’s apparently brought about by fast user switching getting a bit confused. This fits with my laptops usage, as my better half makes use of an account on the computer, as does her brother who pops by occasionally. I’d rather they had their own accounts to do as they will, than tramping all over my stuff, including client-sensitive documents, details and so forth.
Mac OSX Hints has more detail, but the solution, if you get the tint problem, is simply to run the following in Terminal:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/ Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DMProxy
Sorry – this wraps around rather badly. It’s really one very long command, so make sure there are no spaces. Personally, I’ve added an alias to my
alias fixtint=/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DMProxy
to define the alias (ditto that it should be one long line, with only a space between ‘alias’ and ‘fixtint’. It fixes the problem immediately. Here’s hoping that Apple work out how to properly solve this issue in a forthcoming update.
Entries (RSS)
July 30th, 2007 at 4:32 am
Richard, a quick thank you for documenting this MBP tint problem on your site. It’s really helped me out.
regards, Maki
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Thanks for posting this tip. I’m encountering the same problem on my MBP and it’s over a year later than when you posted this! The solution (thankfully) still applies, though.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Thank you so much for this – it is also affecting the normal (!) Macbook – a 2.16Ghz Intel in my case
All the best! R
June 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
It is not only caused by user switching, mine does it all the time and there is only one user.
A simpler fix is to just open System Preferences and click on Display one time.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Thanks for great post. The system preferences and click on display by Darryl Cannon worked for me
July 21st, 2008 at 5:35 pm
That works. But an easier fix is to turn on ‘Hot Spots’ to initiate the screensaver. When the Blue Tint pops up, hot corner the screensaver and immediately exit it and the problem is gone. No terminal necessary.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Amazing it’s still present on current MBPs&Leopard, cmd+option+eject also works
October 9th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Hey , an easier way to fix the tint problem :
ctrl, shift, eject
will reset the display
November 4th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
WOW!!!!! That worked (ctrl, shift, eject)
I have a 17″ MacBook Pro with a 23″ Sony SDM-p234 external and thought i was going crazy when i kept noticing my laptop screen tint.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
This issue wasn’t present until I upgraded from my 13″ black MacBook to the new, late 2008, 15″ MacBook Pro with the unibody aluminum design. It happened twice since upgrading to Safari 3.2.1 along with an error with the quartz rendering engine. Good to know there’s an easy fix and hope Apple fixes this soon!
December 19th, 2008 at 7:49 am
[...] did a little Googling this evening and found a post on leyton.org with a fix that worked perfectly for me. I don’t use Fast User Switching on this machine so I [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Amazing, that fixed my problems. I was sure that it was the dodgy nvidia card in the MBP but not so. Thanks a lot!
May 25th, 2009 at 2:32 am
To me, the only thing that worked was hitting fn+F7.
June 16th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Thanks a lot man! I was afraid I had bumped into a hardware issue once the blue tint appeared. I went to System pref. and clicked the Display settings icon and the problem was magically fixed