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  • MacBook Air M1 eye strain only since Sonoma 14.1.2

Hi there,

since I updated my MacBook Air M1 to Sonoma 14.1.2 I am dealing with eye strain on this device. Until then, I could use my MacBook perfectly fine without any problems.

Does someone here have the same experience and maybe even a way to reduce this?

Thanks!

    I experienced it as well. The only solution is to downgrade to Ventura.

    I was worried that downgrading would preseve the eye strain as Ventura 13.6 and up use Sonoma's system firmware (and system firmware is not downgraded anyway, unless using DFU mode), but I am using 13.6.3 without problems.

    Ventura will remain supported by Apple for two years, and remain functional after that. My bigger concern is that eyestrain is now entrenched in macOS and it could be years before they overhaul rendering again.

    I experienced the same change on iOS 17 and had to downgrade my iPhone SE 2020. This will become a problem much sooner on iPhone as apps drop support much sooner for older versions there.

      Thanks for you reply.

      I experienced the same change on iOS 17 and had to downgrade my iPhone SE 2020

      I am using an iPhone 13 with iOS 17.1.2 without any problems.

      But anyways, this whole eye strain issue is quite new for me. I am 32 and used laptops my whole life. The first time I experienced any issue was with a M1 MacBook Pro 14. But since then it seems I have problems with any newer type of laptop, including Lenovo T14 Gen1 (Touchscreen) and HP EliteBook 845 14 Zoll G9 (Touchscreen). I am trying to find out what exactly causes my problems. Could you share with me what causes problems for you? Maybe this helps me finding the cause. Thanks 🙂

        Kev I would say it is the temporal dithering technology that is becoming more popular and aggressive recently. This technology is also the only way to explain why a device suddenly becomes very hard on the eyes just after an OS update.

        Kev I have Air M1 and I am still on Monterey (12.7) and it gives me unbearable eye strain. Not sure if your pain is related to newer OS. Anyway, I would suggest to try it with true tone on/off or night shift

        2 months later

        Have your tried creating virtual screen with BetterDisplay? It's a game changer for me

        • Kev replied to this.

          Kev It could be something else, not temporal dithering, not PWM, although these are also factors. All we know is - this happened kind of suddenly, and the strain jumped into new heights. It could be some general software trend, or it could be hardware trend. I personally gravitate to hardware trend. Since all laptop screens pretty much come from the same place, this could be fueled by White LED backlights or something like that, which introduces its own constant flicker and changes the light (or EMF) itself that is being pushed into your eyes which can not cope anymore. Now add PWM and temporal dithering to the equation and you have a real problem. There is nothing you can do except stop buying new laptops and simply search for second hand known good devices, otherwise industry gets wrong signals. As for apple, it now even hides panel manufacturer information from new machines, so users are really prisoners of these closed systems.

            Donux Rejection of sinusoidal PWM (with soft signal attenuation) in favor of cheap Pure PWM (instant pixel on/off, backlight strobing). Stop suffering! Just don't buy Apple. Here's the solution to the problem.

              2 months later

              AlanSmith Yes, but Microsoft own branded laptops all have PWM. Lenovo, HP, Acer, Dell, …, … - all lottery to some degree. Writing this from linux machine, which is useful for me, not so useful for shipping apps to customers however.

              Kev Do you also have Stillcolor installed? That should improve things even further — using virtual display doesn't fully disable temporal dithering, but Stillcolor eliminates dithering pretty much entirely on m1air.

              @"bliink"#p35148 No it doesn't for us, your advertisement for your generic posture app is pretty useless here.

              We HAVE been trying to improving posture, using eyedrops, blinking more, taking breaks, trying new glasses and none of those truly fix "bad screens" for us.

              But on the other hand, when I finally disabled temporal dithering on my old Windows laptop I suddenly was able to read my screen perfectly for hours with no strain because I fixed the core issue with that screen. It doesn't even matter if I'm in the worst posture ever, because even then, that laptop doesn't strain me at all anymore because I fixed the screen's problem itself 🙂

              Also, blinking more actually hurts to do while looking at temporally dithered screens for me, as then I have to refocus and it feels like everything starts to move around and go double and I also feel pain while trying to realign the image.

              However, on screens without dithering, yep I intentionally blink more and it helps a lot! But I can't do that on every screen… AKA that does not help me at all while using bad screens!

                Lauda89 the laptop was from 2012 so ditherig.exe worked on it perfectly, it reduced colors all the way down to true six bit surprisingly

                but yeah unfortunately it doesn't work on a lot of laptops, i was just lucky with it being compatible with mine (2012 Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, Windows 8.1, Intel HD 4000)

                2 months later

                I can confirm that doing a full reset for macbook air m2 back to Ventura simnifically reduces eye strain. Something is really off with Sonoma. Do not upgrade, stick with original one.

                  Donux By full reset do you mean DFU restore including rolling back system firmware?

                  Because my Air M1 currently has a weird combo of Ventura 13.6.6 OS in About This Mac but running "on top of" newer Sonoma 14.4.1 "firmware/bootloader/whatever the M1 equivalent of a BIOS version is" (which I wasn't aware was the case until recently) and I have issues. I'm suspecting that if I DFU restore, instead of just reinstall, to make sure even the firmware is back on Ventura too it might improve things

                    DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs That is a very good point, I personally did not follow anything more deeper than going into system restore, deleting partition and reinstalling it from scratch. Probably rolling back firmware should be done too, although I am kind of cautious, it is not bad now as long as you stick with lowest grade color profile (Generic RGB) and still color. Also disable night shift, which is a bit suspicious to me as to how it overrides True Tone (or combines both). I think if true tone matches color temperature with ambient temperature - this is a way to go, at least during a day.

                      dev