How to Set Up Custom ICC Color Profiles in Windows 11 Color Management

Activating the profiles

The classic Color Management tool is the same on Windows 11 Home and Pro, and you do not need to restart afterwards. Windows applies your calibration file instead of the factory default once manual settings are on for your monitor.

Administrator rights are required for the Change system defaults button used in this section. They are also required for the Task Scheduler task later in this tutorial. On a standard account, ask an administrator to do those steps or sign in with an administrator account first.

1. Open the Start menu, type Color Management, and press Enter. The Color Management window opens on the Devices tab.
2. Open the Device dropdown menu at the top of the window and select your monitor. This matters most if you have more than one display connected. If you are not sure which is which, click Identify monitors to show a number on each screen.
3. Check the box labeled Use my settings for this device. This turns on manual profile management for that monitor. The profile list and the buttons below it, greyed out until now, become usable.
4. Click the Add button. The Associate Color Profile window opens.
5. Click Browse, find your downloaded or generated ICC profile on your drive, and click Add. The profile now appears in the list for that monitor.
6. Select the new profile in the list and click Set as Default Profile. The default profile is the one shown in bold or marked as default.
7. Click the Advanced tab at the top of the Color Management window.
8. Click the Change system defaults button and confirm the administrator prompt. A second Color Management window opens. If the prompt asks for credentials you don’t have, you are on a standard account and need an administrator to do this step.
9. In this second window, click its Advanced tab and check Use Windows display calibration.
10. Click Close on the system defaults window, then click Close on the main Color Management window to save your configuration. The screen may flicker briefly as the new calibration loads.

To undo this, open the same window, select the profile, and click Remove. Or uncheck Use my settings for this device to go back to the defaults.

Recent Windows 11 builds also let you pick a profile per display in Settings › System › Display, using the Color profile option for that monitor. The options on that page vary by Windows version and graphics driver, so you may not see all of them.

Auto Color Management and HDR change how Windows applies profiles to a display. When either is on, a custom ICC profile may be ignored or look wrong. If your colors do not match what you expect, turn off Auto Color Management or HDR for that monitor and test again.

Non colour-aware applications

Applications that are not color-aware ignore your color management settings and send their unmanaged output straight to the display. Older games and many standard programs skip the operating system color pipeline. Images then render in your monitor’s native, uncalibrated color space instead of through your custom ICC profile. The result is oversaturated reds and greens, most noticeable on wide-gamut monitors.

Color-aware programs such as Photoshop and Lightroom read your ICC profile themselves, so they are not affected. If a particular program looks too saturated, it is probably not color-aware. Check whether it has its own color management or color space option. Otherwise, accept that it will not follow your profile.

Games misbehaving

Games often strip your custom calibration. This usually happens when a full-screen DirectX or OpenGL mode takes direct control of the display output. The game bypasses the Windows gamma ramp, and your monitor reverts to harsh factory colors the moment the game launches.

1. Open the game’s graphics or video settings.
2. Change the display mode from Fullscreen to Borderless Windowed (some games call this Windowed Fullscreen).
3. Apply the change and check whether your colors stay the same as on the desktop. If the game asks for a restart, do that.

Borderless windowed mode often stops games from overriding your ICC color profile. Some games don’t offer the option. In that case, a loader utility like the one in the next section can reapply your profile after the game starts.

DisplayProfile to easily switch between profiles

DisplayProfile is a lightweight, open-source utility that lets you switch between several ICC color profiles from the Windows taskbar. That is much quicker than opening the Color Management window each time your lighting conditions change. After you install it, a couple of clicks apply a different display calibration.

Download it only from the developer’s official page, and scan the file before you run it.

Display Profile utility

DisplayProfile also helps with a common bug: custom ICC profiles that fail to load after the PC wakes from sleep or reboots. It applies changes directly to the video card gamma table instead of waiting for delayed Windows triggers. The gamma table is the lookup data the graphics card uses to adjust the color it sends to the screen.

1. Launch DisplayProfile.
2. Choose your primary monitor in the device selection menu.
3. Select your preferred color profile and save it, so the utility keeps applying it.
4. Put the PC to sleep, wake it, and check that the colors are still correct.

Fixing Delayed Profile Activation After Startup

Delayed profile activation can leave your display booting up with washed-out colors. It happens because the standard Windows color loader starts after the desktop shell. This creates a race condition, where two processes compete and your graphics driver applies its default settings last. A dedicated startup task, or a third-party loader started from that task, forces your custom ICC profile to apply right away.

Creating this task requires administrator rights, because it runs with the highest privileges. Sign in with an administrator account before you start.

1. Open the Start menu, type Task Scheduler, and press Enter. Task Scheduler opens.
2. Click Create Task in the Actions pane on the right side of the window. Use Create Task, not Create Basic Task, because only the full version has the options below.
3. On the General tab, name the task something recognizable, such as Force ICC Profile.
4. Check Run with highest privileges near the bottom of the General tab.
5. Switch to the Triggers tab and click New. Select At log on from the Begin the task dropdown menu, then click OK. If the profile still loads too early, you can also set Delay task for under the advanced settings in this dialog, for example 30 seconds.
6. Switch to the Actions tab, click New, and leave Action set to Start a program.

7. Click Browse and select your color management utility’s executable. You can also point it to a custom script that reloads your profile.
8. Switch to the Conditions tab. If you are configuring a laptop, uncheck Start the task only if the computer is on AC power. Otherwise the task will not run on battery.
9. Click OK to save the task. Your calibration is now applied every time you sign in to your user account. Sign out and back in to test it.

To remove the task later, find it in the Task Scheduler Library, right-click it, and choose Delete.

Ensuring Calibration Survives Graphics Driver Updates

1. Open the Start menu, type Color Management, and press Enter.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Click the Change system defaults button and confirm the administrator prompt to open the system defaults window.
4. In this window, click the Advanced tab. Uncheck Use Windows display calibration, click Apply, and then check it again. This forces Windows to rewrite the profile association cleanly.
5. Open your graphics manufacturer’s control panel🎛️ software and find the desktop color settings page. Select the option that lets other applications control color adjustments instead of the driver. The wording and location differ between NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, and between driver versions.
6. Back up your custom ICC profile by copying it from C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color to a safe external backup folder. If a driver update or a major Windows feature update strips your configuration, you can re-add the file with the steps in the first section.

What to do next

Your custom color calibration should now load reliably at startup and stay active while you work. If it does not, recheck Use my settings for this device and the startup task first. Then check whether Auto Color Management or HDR is turned on for that display.

As a next step, consider adjusting your display’s physical brightness and contrast buttons so the monitor matches the white point specified in your new ICC profile.