FWIW…

For a long time I was staying away from newer Macbooks because when I purchased my 2019 16" MBP, it instantly gave me grave eyesore. The first days I could not figure out why my eyes were hurting and I thought I was getting sick as this is when that usually happens to me. But spending the first weekend without the new Macbook and getting the eyesore back instantly when opening the lid on Monday morning got me googling and discovering ledstrain.org.

Eventually I figured out that SwitchResX+Millions of colors made the eyesore tolerable (not the same as my old computer but tolerable). Then I had a good chance to sell it so I did to gather some money to buy some M-series Macbook as I heard they are really quiet and fast.

But as I occasionally got the chance to test drive some M1 and M2 Macbook Airs, which were given me to perform the initial setup and installation of software and data migration from users' older Macs, I learned that they were just as aweful as my MBP was out of the box, but SwitchResX wouldn't allow to reduce colors to millions of colors on them either, so I aborted the plan to go for M1/M2 and so I was stuck on my old 2013 MBP I had lying around.

However, someone suggested me to try if the ProMotion displays on M1 Pro/Max were as bad on my eyes or not. Initially I dismissed this idea because I had already visited Apple shop to evaluate the displays of the new Macbooks and left the shop with sore eyes after 15 minutes.

But the other day I had some spare time and I went there again. I started from 16" M2 Pro. I spent about 5 minutes on it, scrolling web sites and playing around. To my astonishment, I did not feel the usual uncomfortable feeling in my eyes, so I left the 16" MBP and went to 15" MBA and I could immediately feel the uncomfortness in my eyes.

So I hunt down a nice offering for 16" MBP from eBay and ordered it. I have now spent about 3 weeks with it and I can tell that its display is way better for my eyes than the M1 MBA and M2 MBA I had briefly used before. But if the 2019 16" MBP and M1/M2 MBAs were giving me eyesores, this 16" M1 Pro is giving me a slight strain in my forehead, between my eyes but slightly above the eyelevel. And a liiitle bit of eyesore too. Like 1-2 of 10 if 10 is what my 2019 MBP was out of the box. I did not notice the strain in the forehead before with the MBAs but maybe it was because the eyes were hurting so much.

So the M1 Pro MBP is usable, although not 100% perfect. I'd say that the bump in speed and it's "coolness" and silentness weighs up the slight strain in my forehead it gives me.

Maybe this helps someone who has only tried MBAs.

    henno hi, I have had all the symptoms that you have mentioned. Currently I'm using M1 16 pro. Better display software utility is giving me relief. I suggest you to try this once. Create a dummy with resolution 1920*1200 low dpci, set brightness of that dummy to 60-70%. Then mirror that dummy to main display. Keep the main display brightness to 100%. In the display settings , for main display use genric RGB profile.

        karthi3219, it's heartening to see, in such a short span, that others are experiencing the same symptoms as I am. This indicates that my symptoms are not so rare, and there are many others in my exact situation. The response from Apple Accessibility quoted above gives me hope that this issue might receive the necessary attention and improvements will be forthcoming someday.

        I hope that someone, who can help make a difference, will stumble upon this post someday and help set things in motion that lead to Apple fixing this issue for us. So, if you, the reader, know someone working with the display or GPU technology at Apple or know just someone working at Apple who might know someone, please do pass on this message to them!

        I've already tried reaching out to various people at Apple and Nvidia who are experts in GPU architecture. I hoped they could make educated guesses on what might be causing these headaches and eyesores with newer Apple devices or what possibilities would there be to find a solution or workarounds. Unfortunately, I've yet to receive any response from any of them. I attempted contacting Barak Shahar, William Xu and Guanlan Xu (GPU design managers at Apple) and Tong Tong (Senior GPU Hardware Engineer at NVIDIA) via LinkedIn.

        I'd like to try the method you described, but I apologize, I'm struggling to understand your explanation. Could you provide more detail, or possibly run your instructions through ChatGPT to generate clearer versions of them, so that I could understand exactly what steps I should take?

            henno Sure, I will explain the steps in detail.

            Step 1: Download the application from https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/63642/betterdisplay and install it in your mac

            Step 2: Open the application. Create new dummy

            Tools -> Create new dummy -> 16:10

            Step 3: Mirror the dummy to the main display. Check the checkbox " Set as Main Display" in the dummy screen section.

            In the application -> Under the dummy screen ->

            Mirror Dummy -> Select color LCD.

            Step 4: Increase the LCD brightness to 100%. Set the dummy brightness to 65%. Set the dummy resolution to 1920*1200. Uncheck the "High Resolution HiDPI )".

            Step 5: Open display settings and make sure the below color profiles are choosen.

            Display settings for dummy: Color profile should be choosen Generic RGB

            Display settings for in-built display:

            Thats all. Use this settings and see how you are feeling about it. I am feeling much comfortable and relief with this settings. You can play around with brightness of the dummy display & color profiles of Dummy and main display to find the best config for your eyes. Make sure your inbuilt display is always 100% brightness.

                What version of macOS do you have? When I go to System Preferences > Displays, I see

                And whenever any of the non-Apple color profiles are chosen on the main display, the brightness is reduced to quite dark and it is not changeable:

                When I attempt to change the resolution with BetterDisplay, it jumps back to 100% after I change it:

                and this 100% is not particularly bright. I can use it but in a brightly lit room, it becomes hard to see and I must switch back to Apple P3 in order to get some more brightness.

                  henno I think you misunderstood few things.

                  1. In the display settings - Don't use Built-in Display as Main display. Instead use the Dummy 16:10 as Main display. Built-in Display should mirror the dummy 16:10.

                  2. Built-In display brightness should be always 100%.

                  3. Adjust the dummy 16:10 display brightness according to your eye comfort. I find 65% brightness in dummy display is usable.

                  4. In the betterDisplay application - Set resolution of the dummy to 1920*1200. All other settings in your BetterDisplay should look similar to this below.

                  5. Display settings should look like below.

                  6. Display settings of the dummy should look like below.



                    MacOs version doesn't matter here. But sill for the reference pasting my os version here. Ventura 13.4.1 (c)




                    henno if you still couldn't setup, let us connect through Zoom. DM me.

                        The m1 pro 16" has an OLED display, which uses PWM. I am confused. I do not see how software might be able to disable PWM flicker?

                          caboy m1 and m2 macbook pro use a MINI LED display not OLED. The APP BetterDisplay can't remove the PWM but seems to do something to the dithering. Also, changing the color profile can modify the PWM frequency:

                              Lauda89

                              Thanks for clarifying.

                              Do you think this would work with a 13" Macbook Pro? From what I understand the 13" does not have PWM. I am not sure about that though.

                                5 days later

                                karthi3219 I did manage to set it up after your last instructions. I've been using that setup eversince. However, in bright environments I find it hard to use because the display is too dark.

                                    henno you can play around with different settings and find best suits for your eyes. "high resolution high DPI" (radio option in the menu )settings also good for me. This option is for more picture clarity. Also sometimes I increase brightness upto 75-80% still ok for me. Overall this app is savior for me. This is my work laptop. If I this solution isn't exist, I have to resign the job and no other way. As you said , Apple should listen to all victims like us and improve or atleast give some options for us.

                                      henno how do find the setup? Is it good except the brightness issue? For me this setup works for 8-9 hours usage with few mins breaks every hour. It's good enough for work. For personal use I have another windows setup. I'm keeping that windows setup intact by disabling all updates and have took enough system image backup and head drive backup to restore in case any update goes through.

                                          karthi3219 I can't decide whether this setup is any better than the default macOS setup + sRGB profile. Watching movies on this setup can be problematic due to severe banding in dark scenes. Yet, during daily tasks, I don't notice the banding. After the BetterDisplay trial ends, I'll revert it to the default setup to see if I will miss it and it's worth purchasing.

                                          Note: It's still unclear to me why only the color profiles starting with 'Apple' allow for brightness adjustments. Is it the same with you?

                                          • FNP7 replied to this.
                                              23 days later

                                              henno karthi3219

                                              I'm using a Macbook Air M2 and Better Display seems to be making a massive difference for me. Been using it for a week or so. Settings are as described by karthi3219 above. If I change the colour profiles from sRGB for the built in display and Generic RGB Profile for the dummy or virtual display, I seem to get eyestrain. Weird. I'd used Better Display on my wife's Intel MBP and it helped a lot there too. Big thanks to you guys for sharing this solution. I hope it helps more people.

                                              The only thing I can't make work is watching Apple TV on the MBA. When the built in display is set to mirror dummy display, video playback on Apple TV is black/ gives no image. But this is a small issue, when the laptop is otherwise great for me currently thanks to this fix. 🙂

                                                    FNP7 The only thing I can't make work is watching Apple TV on the MBA. When the built in display is set to mirror dummy display, video playback on Apple TV is black/ gives no image. But this is a small issue, when the laptop is otherwise great for me currently thanks to this fix. 🙂

                                                    I know some of the streaming apps go to black when you try to record/screenshot them. I bet Apple made it that way when watching ATV on a Mac. It probably thinks you're recording or something so it blacks it out.

                                                    On your main point that's great that it's working for you… I'm going to try it out on the M3 Air (if one comes out).

                                                      Does anyone know of a similar workaround/ fix for Windows on a PC? So, how to enable a dummy display and use it to prevent dithering?

                                                      6 days later

                                                      karthi3219 Uncheck the "High Resolution HiDPI )".

                                                      Thx for this hack. So basically the window manager uses now a virtual screen and the system does not apply FRC to the output ?
                                                      I wonder why you disable hidpi, since this will leave me with an very blurry image (half resolution). How to get the native resolution working ? (mbp 16 m1)

                                                          gabigreenhorn Initially I felt enabling hidpi gave me strain. But now, I am feeling comfortable enabling hidpi. we have to basically play with different options in better display, different options in colour profiles and find best working combination. This may change person to person.

                                                          I found another solution. This is mostly for folks who have working windows setup (good setup without eyestrain) in personal PC but want to use MacBook for office use. Mostly office laptops are locked to install new softwares and you have to mandatorily upgrade OS frequently. My idea was to use Video capture card plug to Macbook, output the video to Windows PC into a OBS studio and see your macbook screen streamed to Windows PC. This setup is also working for me really good. I have 1 working windows setup with intel i5 config ( 11 year old driver ). I have disabled all windows upgrade on this PC. I stream the Office Macbook screen to this personal pc and able to work on office macbook comfortably. But drawback is, I can use this setup only during work from home. While in office, I use the better display software to use Macbook. For now, with all these tricks, I am managing my software engineering job. Totally all these sucks. My career at risk any time if any of these tricks breaks.

                                                          I will shortly post a separate thread with detailed setup of this.

                                                              karthi3219

                                                              that is even a crazier hack 😉

                                                              I am working with the betterdisplay solution since some hours now and my eyes feel much better +better focus. The downside is, that the display now feels like max 50% brightness. (this might be tweakable through custom color profile (copy srgb) and increase the luminance to eg 320)

                                                              What is your take on the new macbook air m2 displays and on OLED displays in general ?

                                                                dev