Screen rotation bug and reset

Question

Poked at the system settings, display settings, and changed screen rotation setting to 180. Immediately after rotation setting became read only, and then after 30 seconds it crashed.

After reboot i cant'go to system setting any more, it just says to me that it cant open display settings and hangs.

NVRAM reset (options+cmd+R+P) does not reset screen rotation setting, only everything else.

So. How to do rotate display back to default? Command line options anyone?

Macbook Pro 13", 2013, OS X 10.10.2

Do NOT rotate your screen using command-alt-click on the Display preference pane. Hack/fix here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/104832/55028 — CousinCocaine, Jun 19 '15 at 12:53
The fb-rotate tool mentioned in DamienG's answer worked for me when I had the exactly the same problem. — Angad Singh, Dec 03 '16 at 16:01

DamienG · Answer 1 · 2016-12-07T19:00:30.457

3

Accepted answer didn't work for me but the following free command-line tool did;

https://github.com/CdLbB/fb-rotate

Once compiled (see readme) just ./fb-rotate -d 0 -r 0

edited Dec 07 '16 at 19:00

answered Nov 04 '16 at 19:57

DamienG

133

Even works on MacOS Sierra – Matt Jun 14 '17 at 16:02
Perfect! Worked like a charm. Thank you so much! – Sergey Lukin Oct 09 '21 at 11:49
No longer works on Catalina, even with sudo - IOServiceRequestProbe: error 268435459. – lonstar Oct 24 '22 at 17:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 04 '16 at 20:52

1

To reset the System Preferences:

Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist

If you don't see the Rotation Setting in the Displays Panel, try this:

Close the System Preferences if it is open.
Open System Preferneces
option-command click on Displays
You should now have access to the rotation settings.

edited Nov 04 '16 at 20:52

DamienG

133

answered Jun 03 '15 at 14:08

Lee Joramo

2,621

No, it can't open display settings by all means. – Alexis Westmoreland Jun 03 '15 at 14:09
Sorry, I read too fast. I updated my answer on how to hopefully reset the System Preferences so it doesn't crash. – Lee Joramo Jun 03 '15 at 14:18
deleting systempreferences.plist doesn't do anything... – Alexis Westmoreland Jun 03 '15 at 14:34
You zapped the PRAM, have you booted in safe mode (hold down shift while starting up ) or logged into a different user account? – Lee Joramo Jun 03 '15 at 14:48
yes, i did all mentioned things. – Alexis Westmoreland Jun 03 '15 at 14:50
but i fixed this by spending 1$ on app in App Store, which gave shortcuts for screen rotations. it worked, i rotated screen to 0 deg, and Display Settings started to work. eh.
but anyway, thank you for willing to help.
– Alexis Westmoreland Jun 03 '15 at 14:51
The app you purchased must be reseting some preference, but I am not sure where they are saved. In ~/Library/Preferences/ there are pref files com.apple.preference.displays.*.plist where * is a hash code referring specific display. (I assume an external display). However, on my system, these do not appear to have recent timestamps despite having just done a lot of Display changes on my own system. – Lee Joramo Jun 03 '15 at 15:18

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 16 '15 at 14:39

1

I ran into an issue where I could not load the display pane at all, even after multiple quits and restarts and PRAM resets; safe mode boot resolved it for me!

answered Nov 16 '15 at 14:39

FlappleGums

11

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 19 '17 at 13:49

0

I have a MacBook Pro with macOS 10.12.3, did the rotation before I read this post. The way that I fixed it was doing a Safe Mode Restart. Was pulling my hairs out

edited Apr 19 '17 at 13:49

oa-

7,716

answered Mar 13 '17 at 20:35

rickyreys

1

score -1 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 25 '16 at 12:33

-1

I bought Pivot - Display Rotation on the Apple Store and it fixed the problem.

edited Dec 25 '16 at 12:33

nohillside

100,768

answered Dec 25 '16 at 11:52

Raphael

1

Screen rotation bug and reset

5 Answers5