App Bug Silently Filled Mac With Ghost Monitor Profiles, Slowing It After Uninstall
A developer building ExtendPilot, an app that turns an iPad into a real second display for macOS, discovered a severe bug that degraded Mac performance even after the app was closed. The issue stemmed from how virtual displays were identified: each app launch generated a new serial number using the process ID, causing macOS to treat every session's display as a brand-new monitor. ColorSync daemons responded correctly by profiling each 'new' monitor and storing the ICC profile permanently, eventually accumulating 72 ghost profiles and consuming over a full CPU core. The root cause was an identity field derived from an ephemeral value — the process ID — when it needed to be stable across launches. The fix replaced the process ID with a hash of the display's size and slot, ensuring consistent identity without creating duplicate entries over time.
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