I have a 2017 Macbook Pro 13 without touchbar. Its totally fine for me running Mac OS X 10.15.7. I do notice that I get eye strain with almost all recent web browsers, even though the rest of the system doesn't bother me. I am fine with Safari 13 that shipped with 10.15.7. This MBP has an Intel Core i5 Kaby Lake processor with Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics.

I suspected that dithering is somehow being enabled by these newer browsers when rendering web content - even though its apparently not enabled at a system level in this version of Mac OS X. So to test this I installed Windows 11 using bootcamp. After installing Windows and running all updates, I confirmed the UI was not causing eye strain. I then installed the current version of Firefox and Edge. Both browsers caused the same eye strain as they do on Mac OS X. I then loaded ditherig 2.1 and then restarted the browsers. Firefox doesn't seem bother me nearly as much with ditherig running. Edge seems a little better also, but it didn't bother me as much as Firefox. Chrome still bothers me. Previously I could only use versions of Firefox before the recent UI change (<89). I couldn't use any recent Chromium or webkit browsers on this system.

Can anyone explain this? Can temporal dithering be enabled on a per application basis? Is there some change that was adopted in all of the major web rendering engines over the past couple years that causes this? Can it be disabled using a setting or maybe custom CSS?

    asus389

    asus389 I suspected that dithering is somehow being enabled by these newer browsers when rendering web content - even though its apparently not enabled at a system level in this version of Mac OS X.

    It is impossible, at least on macOS. Dithering is totally controlled from the kernel level. The browsers have no privileges to control dithering. Another problem is each graphics card has its own approach to control dithering.

        I can't speak to your current browser issues, but I had a capture card and software to analyse. Many times I'd find that software caused me eye strain or migraines, but upon testing with the card I found it wasn't dithering. I only ever found dithering to come from GPUs and their configuration, never from software.

        I've not been able to determine what it was about the various software's that caused me issues. but, I some of those triggers are due to the level of sharpness/blur. My point is, there are triggers out there other than dithering or flickering.

          Seagull I've not been able to determine what it was about the various software's that caused me issues. but, I some of those triggers are due to the level of sharpness/blur. My point is, there are triggers out there other than dithering or flickering.

          While capture card will show dithering (especially using a frame by frame comparison), does it show all forms of flicker? Bringing up an old thread here from martin:

          Weve done similar tests now under a powerful industrial microscope with some extra tools to get rid of intereferences like PWM and screen refresh rate. I can confirm some of the findings here - iphone 4s which was good for me showed no subpixel flicker at all. Iphone 7 shows quite a strong flickering. I also noticed flicker in apps, where the app layout and fonts doesnt flicker, but what the app loads (website browser) does....If these frequencies meet in a weird way, it produces flicker of way lower frequencies than what is safe. Also those may not be a whole screen occurence, but localized in different parts of the screen.

              ryans

              it will only show flickering or dithering within the output sent to the monitor. It won't tell you about how the screen itself flickers or displays the output it receives. Reading the quote you've posted my first thought is LCD inversion flickering which will be affected by what the screen is showing. In general, figuring out what's going on with phones is very difficult because its not possible to isolate different parts (GPU, OS, display, drivers etc), so I don't really know what's going on with those iphones.

                I wonder if there is a newer rendering algorithm that is being used for power efficiency reasons in most web browsers now that is causing the irritation. It’s very strange because I can look at the same web page in Safari 13 and Safari 14/15/16 on the same machine/os and the former doesn’t bother me at all, but the later does. Also, it seems only to effect Mac OS because my iPhone 6S is running Safari 15 (for iOS 15) and it totally fine. I wonder if they are doing variable refresh rate within the web browser window instance? Some text rendering change? Maybe color management change?

                Booting in safe mode (at least on Mac OS X Ventura/Safari 16.x) helps a lot. So whatever is contributing to this problem is not being loaded when in safe mode.

                Windows in this machine is also better before I installed all the latest drivers, but isn’t as bad as recent Mac OS in general for whatever reason. It does improve with ditherig loaded, but it’s subtle.

                dev