Dear Apple Color Management Team,
I’m a professional visual creator working on color-critical photo and graphic projects using macOS (currently 26.1 Tahoe).
In recent macOS releases, LUT-based ICC display profiles (such as XYZ LUT + Matrix types generated by DisplayCAL or professional spectrophotometers) can no longer be installed or activated via ColorSync.
This limitation significantly affects professional workflows in photography, graphic design, prepress, and video color grading — fields that rely on precise display profiling.
The current workaround (converting LUT profiles to simple shaper/matrix ICC v2) results in less accurate tone response and color reproduction, particularly in the dark range and wide-gamut displays.
I kindly request Apple to restore or re-enable the ability to install and use ICC v2/v4 LUT-based display profiles under ColorSync, as was possible on macOS Monterey and Ventura.
This would allow professionals to continue using trusted calibration tools such as DisplayCAL, X-Rite i1Profiler, and Calibrite Profiler to achieve accurate color management.
macOS is widely used in professional creative industries, and restoring this feature would be a huge help for countless photographers, designers, and colorists.
Thank you for your attention and commitment to professional users.
Best regards, Richárd Deutsch Professional Photographer https://riccio.hu/ MacBook Pro (M4 Pro, macOS 26.1)
Our engineering teams need to investigate this issue, as resolution may involve changes to Apple's software. Please file a bug report, include a small Xcode project and some directions that can be used to reproduce the problem, and post the Feedback number here once you do. If you post the Feedback number here I'll check the status next time I do a sweep of forums posts where I've suggested bug reports.
Bug Reporting: How and Why? has tips on creating your bug report.