MacBook doesn't remember Screen Orientation

Solution 1:

I had this same issue. So the solution is:

• The external monitor should be connected.
• From App drawer open ColorSync Utility.
• In Devices column, select display and Under Displays select your external monitor.
• Check if "Factory profile" path and "Current profile" path both are same.
• If not select drop down arrow next to "Current Profile" and select "Other".
• Select the same file name which is mentioned under Factory path.

Now your monitor will remember the screen orientation. Hope it helps :)

Solution 2:

There is a button labelled "Gather Windows" that ought to help you, but I am also looking for a real fix and there seems to be none.

Solution 3:

There are (at least) two different problems here. I'm "lucky" enough to have experienced both :-(

If you use two identical models, be aware that macOS doesn't care about their serial numbers. So when you connect both at the same time (e.g.: through a dock) then they are racing against each other. Some people are lucky because the same monitor always loses the race (longer cable? slower microcontroller?). Others are less lucky and see more random results. See complete details including log files, reproduction steps and workarounds at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/377836/236162

I've been using a single external monitor for a long time now and obviously stopped experiencing the previous issue. Everything was fine until 10.15.7, then macOS stopped remembering my 90° orientation, now reverts to "standard" every single time I reconnect it. Never happened with 10.15.6. @Charanjeet_Singh 's answer gave me a lot of hope because I immediately found a ColorSync profile mess: 5 files for that same monitor, all with almost the same info except for some extra vcgp field, just different GUIDs. I deleted them all except for the Factory one however this made no difference. BTW macOS keeps recreating a DELL U2713HM-FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF.icc copy of the factory profile.

10.15.7 seems to have broken rotation in more than one way: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252025348

UPDATE: I now use an AppleScript as workaround, see below.

UPDATE2: on the 19th of January 2020 the rotation bug has magically disappeared. There's been no software update I've been aware of. EDIT: because I... rebooted.

UPDATE3: following a security update (without any version number bump!), the issue came back on the 3rd of February 2020 EDIT: the problem happens like clockwork every time there is an OS update. An additional reboot fixes it!

# This rotate ONE external monitor of any model. Tested with Catalina.
# Note sure what this does with more than one monitor. 
#
# Note macOS has a race condition when you connect two identical monitors
# at once with a dock or MST daisy chaining (which is just hiding a 
# "dock"/hub inside the first monitor)
# https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/377836/236162
#
tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    reveal anchor "displaysDisplayTab" of pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        delay 1
        set frontmost to true
        tell window 2 # monitor type not hardcoded
            click pop up button "Rotation:" of tab group 1
            keystroke "90" & return
        end tell
        # No infinite loop and force quit.
        # Retraining monitor links may take a while
        repeat with i from 1 to 12
            delay 1
            try
                # It is now window 1 because it has focus
                tell sheet 1 of window 1
                    click button "Confirm"
                    exit repeat
                end tell
            on error errText
                log errText
            end try
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell