Why the heck do I have three (?!?) “Color LCD” profiles under “Displays” in macOS? Screenshot below of what I see when I go the “Displays > Color profile” selection list.
I assume it is a mistake or byproduct of updates over the years, but I find it to be confusing and annoying. Why isn’t there be just one “Color LCD” profile since I assume it is the default and generic one.
I am using a MacBook Air (Intel, 2020) and recently upgraded to macOS Sonoma (14.0).
I don’t know why the heck there are “Color LCD” listed under “Displays” but I know where they live and I’m going to do something about them!
First, I opened up the “Terminal” and ran this command:
open /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/
There I saw them!
Alternatively, you can run this command in the “Terminal” as well:
ls -la /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/
And the output of that command would be as follows:
drwxrwxr-x 6 root wheel 192 Oct 7 20:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root wheel 320 Sep 16 09:28 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 3996 Jan 1 2019 Color LCD-1C271637-2A7F-3FFD-5865-D74C2DFCAF85.icc
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 3344 Sep 28 11:42 Color LCD-897747CF-8FDE-BEDB-AF0B-20C734CA7E45.icc
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 4064 Apr 9 2020 Color LCD-C956FC4E-EEBF-B4E7-04A9-96D6D2C17C52.icc
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 4260 Jan 7 2023 Sidecar Display-6161706C-6950-6164-0000-053900000000.icc
As you can see, there are three of them with different hashes and modification dates. I don’t know what the difference its, but to clear up my specific issue I decided to keep the one from September 28, 2023 (the most recent one) and toss April 9, 2020 as well as Jan 1, 2019 (the older ones).
And, et voilà! The “problem” is solved. Whatever those extra profiles were, they are gone now and the “Displays > Color profile” menu is now cleaner/easier to parse.
PS: If anyone cares to explain what those profiles were about or why they even existed and even if they held any value, please do. I don’t think they were important and shoudn’t cause me any problems; I hope!
