My possible solution for the eyestrain on M1pro 16 MacBook pro

Henry1987

Hi everyone,

I just want to share my possible solution for the eyestrain on M1 MacBook pro 16. I’ve been using MacBook Pro 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 for the past few years. I get no fatigue or eyestrain on 2015 model. But I am severely affected by 2017, 2019 and 2021 MacBooks. M1 MBP is the worst among all these models, I get eyestrain within 2 minutes and it lasts at least for the whole day. For the M1 model, I tested all kinds of the possible suggestions including disable True Tone, promotion, select srgb profile, turn off font smoothing, adjust brightness, etc. None of them works for me, it’s just like the whole screen is waving or shaking which makes me extremely hard to focus.

Then I tried a color profile called PAL & SECAM Video(BT.601 EBU). Once I switch to the profile, I instantly notice the screen become static and I can easily focus, read the text just like I’m using mbp 2015. Although it does not 100% solve the problem, I can look at the screen the whole day with a little fatigue. With the profile, I also tested the above settings and there’s no problem for me.

If you didn’t try this color profile, I hope it works for you.

madmozg

Henry1987 I tried on my working mbp m1 2021 (which i'm not using and its just sitting on a shelf). So before that, laptop for me was like 2-2.5/10, and after new color profile I can say its like 4-5/10. After a while I still feel slight nausea but at least I can work with a laptop for few hours straight. Also noticed a slight lymph nodes of the neck became more tense.

asus389

Which m1 MBP did you have all the issues with? The 13 inch?

Henry1987

Mine is 2021 Macbook pro 16 inch.

mherf

Have you tried:

Changing "ProMotion" to 60hz
Changing "1500 HDR" to "P3-500" / SDR?

Henry1987

Yeah, I tried both options. For me, changing to 60hz is more like a placebo effect, and the second option literally doesn't help. PAL & SECAM Video profile turns out to be the only one that works for me especially when we have some light sources shine on the screen, although it stills causes eye fatigue, it's much better than any other options.

Sentiny

Henry1987
Tried to change my sRGB preset to PAL and noticed better text clarity, cause it makes everything a bit contrasty and darker.

Feels like it's better for me to use PAL preset, however I use it with combination of Betterdisplay (dummy trick) to stop temporal dithering and custom White Point that helps to make display a bit greenish.

Here are my settings. I make different presets for every luminance setting.

And Generic RGB profile for Dummy

This

Sentiny I facing the same problem. I thought something is wrong but could say what.

Could work fir hours on my last laoptop (windows) and got mbp16 and started feeling the problems mentioned.

Can someone help me?

Betterdiplay pro is a paid app. Can someone please share it with me. It would a life saver if one could help me with situation. Spent so much of my savings, just to find out this problem of dithering and ewm. 😔

subapat

This profile is not available on Macbook Air M2. Is there a way to set this or equivalent on the Air?

sensiz

@Sentiny this really made it a lot easier to look at the screen. However with the custom profiles, you loose the ability to increase/decrease the brightness. It works on a fixed brightness. Or am I missing something?

Sentiny

sensiz only fixed brightness. As I said, I make different presets for every brightness level and just change em if I need to decrease or increase brightness.

All you need is to change maximum luminance setting in a range 50-500 and save various presets, for brightness 50,100,150…300,400,500, this will help to change brightness when needed.

Sentiny

This You don't need to buy Betterdisplay to use dummy.

This

Sentiny how do you setter dummy display?

I want text to be large but it gets blurred

Can betterdisplay fix it?

Is there a tutorial?