Hey all, recently I've been experimenting more with my Macbook to see what settings would make my Macbook more usable than it already is (it's usable enough but I still have decent sized headaches and eyestrain). I thought I would include all of my settings so that people could try them and see what results they get.
For reference this is a 2020 MacBook Pro, 4 Thunderbolt 3 version running Catalina 10.15.7.
SwitchResX:
1440x900 resolution (no HiDPI)
Millions of colors
Color Profile: Modified Rec.709 profile (will get to that later)
Contrast:
I have it around 1.5 bars, this made a huge difference for me until the modification that I made to the color profile. Now it all feels the same, but I thought I would include this setting for anyone else who might benefit from it. Additionally, increasing the contrast more made it even better, but it was harder to work in since everything became less defined.
Brightness:
I try to keep it around 75-100% to prevent PWM, but I feel as though I'm not affected as much by PWM anyway so not sure how effective it is.
Dithering:
I used this method to edit my kext, but I feel like it didn't do much. I've recently come to the conclusion that the combination of Millions of Colors and a resolution that doesn't use HiDPI turns off dithering already, correct me if I'm wrong though. If you edit your kext, make sure the kext matches your graphics card. My Macbook uses an Ice Lake graphics card, so I edited the ICL frame buffer kext.
Other Apple settings:
Automatically adjust brightness - off
True Tone - off
Use font smoothing when available - off
To make sure my font smoothing was really off I used this method
Reduce transparency - on
Clover Configurator:
This is also extremely important for my eyestrain. I did this a long time ago, so I don't remember the exact details, but I essentially got Clover Configurator on my Macbook (the program is actually meant for Hackintoshes). The details of what I did are in this post. Every time I boot up my PC, I load up a file called config.plist in Clover, which is a plist I made that simply has -igfxvesa under its boot arguments. This disables Intel's GPU acceleration and loads the graphics card in VESA mode. The only problem with this is that I have to load it every time I turn on my computer. Additionally, for some reason, if you make an app full screen or switch between screens, Clover resets and you have to close and reopen your config.plist. Because of this I use everything in windowed mode. If anyone can improve on this method (making it start on boot or keeping it working after making an app full screen) please let me know!
Color Profile:
The most recent discovery I found was modifying my color profile. I originally downloaded this color profile since I read it bypasses ColorSync (still not sure if that's true or not). After that, I calibrated it and set my target white point to 9500. Originally I was unsure if this was safe or not, since most monitors are set to 6500 default, but I read that Japan uses a 9300 white point as their standard, so I figure it should be fine.
Disclaimer: try anything at your own risk. Edited kexts and using Terminal without any experience is especially dangerous for your Macbook, so make sure you know what you're doing. I simply just wanted to explain all of my settings.
I wanted to write up this post to help out anyone else who wanted to use macOS but couldn't deal with the display render. This forum is the reason I was able to find 99% of this stuff (and the reason I can keep my sanity), so I wanted to contribute as well. If you have any suggestions improvements on my methods, or any success stories as well, let me know!