came across this in searching because i also have eyestrain problem with win10, only tested laptops so many other factors can come into play like gpus and screens.
i see data loss with this audit mode is a concern but maybe if more people have a reduction of the strain using it this could be answer for this particular issue.
could then results be sent to microsoft or other researchers to figure out what audit mode does versus a normal mode.
thanks for reading! :-)
This is interesting. So the Intel UHD driver is running in Audit mode and it is even easier on the eyes than the basic display adapter driver. We should try and see if it works out.
[deleted] I was hoping more people would test and chime in in but guess not :-(
very strange that audit-mode would affect the strain but my guess is if real it affects some hidden setting in windows 10 possibly about compositing or dwm.
maybe if people are concerned about the data-loss they can either do a full disk-image of C drive or take old laptops that do not have the strain with windows 7 do a fresh install of windows 10 with drivers and test the audit-mode there.
closer to a solution for us all the better!
axel @axel, have you really confirmed that audit mode is truly usable for you? Like working 10h days for 5 days a week and you find that it really does not produce any symptoms?
I'm asking because I seem to have days where I tolerate displays a bit better, and if I did use Audit Mode, it might happen that it is just co-incidental, that on that given day when I use it my eyes seem to tolerate it a bit better and then I would draw the conclusion that audit mode is better. But I suspect that if I really used it 10h a day for 5 days, I would find that it produces the same eye strain.
Maxx sorry to be clear have not gotten around to testing win10 with the audit-mode yet. I hope to gather spare computer to try install of win10 with the audit-mode soon.
above post was just speculation and surprise given the fact many people here this issue that not many here seem to be have tried it.
Audit mode is not usable for me but it does change the type of strain i feel in my head.
Staycalmsyndrome interesting, you could detail your os and hardware specs?
thanks!
Tried it on both Win 10 21H2 and Win 10 1511 on older working configuration based on intel i5 2500k + Radeon 7850 (didn't test 21H1).
My Microsoft engineers sugggested something like this. I'm going to give it a try
When I first saw this it reeked to me of tweaking various obscure Windows settings in the hopes of some vague placebo type effect.
However thinking more about it I know it is possible to detect Audit mode using several methods so perhaps DWM or other rendering function alters it's behavior as a condition of having Audit mode enabled (I have not confirmed this for certain, just putting ideas out there.)
Any news on authoring mode , especially over the long term?
I can confirm that with high speed camera I can see way less temporal dithering on audit mode. However it is still there on darker shades. I would not call this fixing the problem.
"Would be awesome if you could post the video here."
I wasted 3 hours exiting the audit mode, so I can't do this. I do not recommend anyone using this route. Better use Windows server, I tried Windows Server 2022 and it did not dithering on my laptop, but the ICC profiles were not loading and brightness of display was nonadjustable. After I installed drivers it made it dither. But every laptop is different.
Tried audit mode. The way it is rendering the image to screen is definitely different - I would say better - but it effectively logged me out of everything, uninstalled half my stuff and 'lost' all my local user files - I keep important stuff in the cloud but still there was some mildly useful things in my downloads folder. Will keep testing this mode.
Audit mode logs you in the administrator account. It doesn't delete other accounts data. Go to C:/Users/"Your account name" and you should be able to find your files.
I recommend that everyone who has success with Audit mode and can afford it buys the $20 microscope that notebookcheck uses (https://ledstrain.org/d/1903-gear-used-by-notebookcheckcom/12) and compares audit mode vs regular mode. If we find something that way, we would finally have some proof that companies can't ignore anymore.
"we would finally have some proof that companies can't ignore anymore."
They can ignore it just fine. If < 1% of customers have an issue it is not an issue.
They can choose to ignore the customers that have the issue, but they can't ignore proof. But I think you got what I meant. Please lets not keep ourselves busy with nitpicking.
Yes audit mode has no flicker in my case verified with high speed phone camera and lens to magnify pixels.
