Thank you so much for posting this; it's both terrible and also encouraging to see there are many others experiencing the same. I can tell you this:

The X & XR & 12 phones all made me sick.
The 11 (running the latest iOS) is less bad than OLED, but still bad.
The 2022 SE is better than the 11 but I still get a weird pale orange "afterglow" tint when I look away from the screen & it doesn't feel good to look at the screen. It's also running the latest iOS and has the 13 chip.

My eyes LOVE the 6s that I haven't upgraded the iOS on at ALL. It's running 13.1.2.
But my time is running out, since this iOS is starting to not be supported by apps.

The next tech after OLED is "mini LEDs" but if what the OP suspects about the processors are true, then these might also cause huge problems and make us sick. LED lighting in general makes me feel gross in rooms etc. It's so "shrill" on my eyes if that makes sense.

My optometrist says I "have pupils that let in more light than normal." So there. Maybe yours do too. I have perfect 20/20 vision and I'm an interior designer & graphic designer who happily stares at her old MSI laptop & her 6S phone all day and night. But I'm ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED to realize that I may not soon be able to have tools to design and work any longer, or to communicate with people like the rest of society, because Apple keeps releasing products that are not healthy for me.

At some point (basically now) we have to form a group and make a huge effort to start a dialogue with Apple. If Apple can create a line of products for those of us whose eyes need gentler products, then they'd know they'd have ALL of the market from us and can charge us a fortune or whatever they like, because we literally have no other products to turn to. For them, that's not a bad thing. All they have to do is use old tech.

Having a group on facebook might even be useful. Seeing there are real people behind the words might help Apple realize it's worth helping out.

    studioceleste Producers like Dell, LG etc imo aknowledge our issues and produce wonderful screens year after year, dell business line to my limited experience is particularly good in this matter.

    I am exactly like you with my symptoms, and I can use the iphone 8 just fine, so maybe you can "upgrade" to that to be ok for a few more years? There is plenty of usable android out there with decent specs as well.

    Maybe we will not be able to use the flagships, but I am quite confident that there will always be options for us 🙂

    I would however not bet on apple providing gentler products. Their business strategy is to sell as few products to as many costumers as possible, we are clearly not a sufficiently large group 🙂

        studioceleste At some point (basically now) we have to form a group and make a huge effort to start a dialogue with Apple. If Apple can create a line of products for those of us whose eyes need gentler products, then they'd know they'd have ALL of the market from us and can charge us a fortune or whatever they like, because we literally have no other products to turn to. For them, that's not a bad thing. All they have to do is use old tech.

        I don't think its entirely a problem of tech companies "not caring" but when there's a vague concern of "eye strain" that has many potential causes where some could be a preexisting medical issue being provoked by unknown properties of a display or even its input source and there's otherwise no clear "cause and effect" here, can you really blame people at "big tech companies" simply throwing their hands up and giving up "solving" this issue under these conditions?

        I don't.

            francerex

            Thank you for your reply. 🙂
            I hadn't realized there were still desktop screens that will work for people with LED sensitivities! I'll be sure to delve into the threads to see which ones do when I need to buy new. That is a great relief to hear. I'm glad these companies actually understand.

            The iphone 8 you'd suggest trying.
            Well, I guess it's worth trying a used one but I guess I've got a $250 paperweight if it doesn't since I'd be the only weirdo trying to buy one these days. 😉

            The original poster mentioned he suspects it could have to do with either the chip or the iOS that's the culprit on LCD screens. Out of curiosity Can you please tell me what iOS you're running?

            Apple hasn't set itself up as a company to be approachable, to be sure. I also wonder if feedback doesn't reach their teams in a way that's effective. Well, I'm not done with them yet-- I may try sending physical paper letters and trying to get in touch with a real human who is slightly higher up. I've recently seen a few youtubers also talking about OLED being awful for them so it would seem there are a few of us out there.

            Cheers.

                JTL

                I don't know.
                Never having tried to approach them in a concrete way before, I'd rather imagine my efforts to be successful and not failing, otherwise I'll never try.

                I've only really glanced at the posts in the intro page, but it would appear as if the commonalities are:

                -LED averse/sensitive
                -pulse modulation sensitive
                -and identifying if it's the chip or the drivers causing further issues, and why.

                But sure, if money is the only motivator for them, no I can't see them trialing different approaches and sending prototypes out to a few of us. But I don't know, I'd rather think we stand a chance of remaining in modern society instead of imagining we can't use smartphones in the next 5 years.

                  studioceleste For what I gathered during the years reading blog and articles, Apple is fully aware of the effects that for example PWM has on some people. They will never aknowledge till it is fully solved technologically, and even then, I fear that might not actually happen. Why would the aknwoledge something potentially bad from a brand point of view?

                  https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-iphone-12-mini-makes-me-sick-literally

                  Is anybody doing real research into the problem, in terms of how many people are affected and how to prevent it?

                  The Chinese government may be, it is very concerned about their children’s eye development because they spend too many hours in front of displays, and they have set some requirements for displays

                  I don't think it is a coincidence that many chinese producers offer dc dimming and market "easier to the eyes" products.

                  As per iphone 8, I have always had it with the latest iOS, now it is on iOS 16. (Like you, I cannot use latest iphone SE or iphone 11)

                      I've been using all types of mac computers, phones and tablets since around 2005 with absolutely no issues. I'm a technology trainer who teaches software and stares at PCs, Macs, and HDTV's all day. In 2017 I purchased an iMac Pro and from the moment the apple logo over black came on during boot up, it immediately hurt by eyes. I put the machine aside for about a year. I then decided to play with it again and went through numerous trouble shooting phases including SwitchResX, Ram and other PRAM resets, FLux, ect. When rebooting, one time it came up and the problem was completely gone. So something I did took it out of the mode that was causing my severe eye strain. Problem is, I don't know what I did to fix it because I was trying multiple solutions one after another. And it was well over a year ago. Worked with it no issues at all for 1.5 years. Recently went into the Display settings, held OPTION down so when I hit the SCALED button it would reveal exact resolution setting, and it INSTANTLY change the display settings to bring the EYE PAIN back immediately. The only thing I saw change was that the fonts got crisper (more detailed) and the color saturation increased. The size of the fonts did not change. And I can't get it to go away again.

                      In 2019 I purchased a 13" MacBook Pro. No eye issues at all. Then, after causing the iMac Pro display to return to causing eye strain, the 2019 MacBook pro also starting causing me eye strain issues. I didn't change any settings on it. Someone suggested because I've got my accounts syncing to the cloud, the display settings from the iMac Pro migrated to the 2019 MacBook Pro. I don't know if I buy that or not. I did upgrade the OS on both machines months ago and there was no eye strain related to that. I worked on them both successfully for months after. My gut tells me that there was a configuration in the older OS that I was able to manipulate to remove the issue causing the eye strain, and that config was retained even though I upgraded the OS. But when I went into the iMac's Display setings and hit OPTION + SCALE, it caused it to overide the previous OS config and click into the newest OS display settings. I can't prove this, but it feels like this might be it. I can't explain why the MacBook Pro would all of a sudden start causing me problems.

                      By the way, I'm also putting both the iMac Pro and MacBook Pro through non-Retina HD-only external monitors to eliminate the possibility of it being a problem with my looking at the built-in Retina displays on those machines. Didn't help.

                      All of a sudden, my iPhone 12 Pro Max is also causing me eye strain. Never did that before.

                      I suspect spending all day working on these machines is causing eye fatigue which is making it more difficult for me to look at any computer screens. Even my HDTV has slowly started causing eye strain, but not as severe. I have found that turning all the displays complete black and white has halved the eye strain. Doesn't entirely eliminate it, but it does allow me to not have to pop Extra Strength Tylenols for headaches.

                      Eye doctor says nothing is wrong with my eyes. I have been using readers for computer work for years, just for focus assistance. We're now trying some prescription glasses with various blue light and other options to see if this will help at all. I will get them later this week and report back.

                      To see if this was only Mac-related, I picked up an inexpensive Windows Laptop and worked on that for a week. It was alot less eye strain, but still there.

                        brvideo I changed my room lighting to a 40W "warm/milky?" incandescent a few days ago and it feels better than the LED tubelight I had earlier (which wasn't too bad even if a bit too bright), and also the "daylight" CFL and the small flickerless LED tube I tried for a few days each before the incandescent. A change in lighting might ease the strain from the monitors a bit (it might take a couple of days to really feel the difference). The amplitude of the flicker from incandescents and cfls is (generally) less than that of LEDs with flicker I think, and also their colour spectrum might be easier on our eyes methinks coz I found the flickerless LED a bit harsh even though it was just 5W … but I need to go back and try it again to be sure.

                          I'm not using any electronic lighting in my home office where I've been working for the last two years. And nothing has changed. There is a cathedral ceiling with a window behind me that lets some sunlight in. Most of the wall is behind closed vertical blinds but there is some light coming from the very top. But I don't think that's a cause. If it's raining and really dark I do have a desk lamp but I rarely turn it on except maybe at night and that's not when I'm working.

                          I have played with patching one eye just to see what happens, and yes, there is a great deal less pain. But, I can't work like that for any length of time nor would I even want to try and adapt to it. I did mention this to my eye doctor and asked if this means I have "binocular vision" or some similar ailment. He said everybody uses both eyes to create images and sometimes there are differences in perception but nothing is wrong with my eyes in that regard.

                            francerex
                            Thanks for letting me know you're running the latest iOS on the 8 and that it's still fine for your eyes. I'll start digging around to find a used 8 with decent storage and hang tight until they introduce phones that don't make me sick.

                            Interesting about Apple, but if they do remedy it they'll just introduce the new tech with fancy marketing words so that people won't even realize it's less harmful for their eyes. Let's hope it makes it to a stage to be remedied!

                              I have the same symptoms as you described with the same devices.

                              However I can use iPhone 11, XR e SE just fine (LCD ones).

                              To my surprise I can not use the new MacBook pros nor the new studio display.

                              I use to work at Apple as a software engineer and I’ve raise this concern with the display team which tried their best to understand what was wrong with me/the screens, the guess is the PWM but it is still unknown since the XDR displays (new iPad 11 inch, MacBooks and studio display) have much higher frequency than iphone oled displays and I still can’t use it.

                                I recently also cancelled my Tesla model y order after test driving it and finding out the screen gives me eye strain, nausea and migraine. 🤦‍♂️

                                brvideo I have played with patching one eye just to see what happens, and yes, there is a great deal less pain. But, I can't work like that for any length of time nor would I even want to try and adapt to it.

                                For me training with one eye covered/patched have made my brain / eye muscles to relearn so I can use all screens with both eyes, as a normal person. Before I couldn’t use any LED-screen never than 2011, that was a big problem. So for me it was a total game changer.

                                So it’s not about trying to adapt, is a relearning/reprogramming process.

                                If it works with patching you should start to train with one eye, and hopefully you will have the same success as me.

                                  augusto I use to work at Apple as a software engineer and I’ve raise this concern with the display team

                                  The obvious temporal dithering is another culprit 🙂? And whatever this flicker is.

                                    augusto what's your opinion on the way macOS renders fonts? Eye strain and migraines worsened for me when I switched from video editing on my 2019 16in MBP to studying and coding. It was impossible to focus and had to take breaks every 10-15 minutes.

                                    A quick search revealed more and more software developers have issues with Apple products, and I found the way macOS handles text rendering is different than in Windows and Linux. I found Ubuntu to be the best for my poor set of eyes, to the point I find myself hyperfocused for the entire day without breaks, and the difference here might be due to font hinting.

                                    And for me, there's also something about having to scale the resolution in 4K screens. Everything is either too small at native resolution, or too blurry when scaled in macOS (and I've tried just about everything to fix the eye strain from text reading and writing).

                                    By the way, the Touchbar on my MBP flickers like crazy when recorded in slow motion with a phone camera. There are so many variables at play here, I'm confident my issue is not restricted to PWM alone.

                                        pushupsandcode You can check what settings are set by running the gnome tweaks app. If not installed, install it. Then look at the fonts section, my guess is that it'll say slight hinting, greyscale AA.

                                        You should determine if on your MBP Ubuntu is rendering using the discrete AMD driver or the integrated Intel one since you have both in your MBP. Do you know? Check in system settings about/details to see, or type glxinfo | grep OpenGL

                                            Sunspark Unfortunately, having Ubuntu on my Macbook was short-lived, even though it looked gorgeous and relaxing on the Retina screen. It was overheating to the point that it was crashing every few minutes.

                                            But just before that I've managed to install Tweaks and see that Hinting was enabled at slight (it looked better at full), and AA was at subpixel. The AMD was recognized and working, but I don't know if that was the one rendering. Anyways, I've already reset it and put it for sale, and not willing to have another 3 day migraine. I got a used Thinkpad E15 Gen 2 for €330 (arrived this morning), been testing Ubuntu all day, so far no eye strain, no headaches and works great. I will keep testing.

                                              2 months later

                                              augusto hey man, I have the same problem. I also thought that iphone 11 was the first OLED display, no? Also I dont have any problems with my macbook pro 15 2018. Only with macbook pros with M1 and studio display. 🙁

                                                bkdo we are exactly the same. Could you find a solution? My iPhone 7 Plus and MacBook Pro 2013 are about to die.

                                                  dev