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 ?

                    a month later

                    Follow up:

                    Using the sRGB profile on my MBP 2021 M1 Pro reduced my screen strain by 98%, without needing BetterDisplay. BetterDisplay's virtual mirrored screens didn’t impact my strain at all but they did lower screen quality (color banding). The sRGB profile unfortunately disables brightness adjustments, but the default brightness is generally suitable.

                      23 days later

                      henno You can create custom display profile based on the Apple's sRGB with your own brightness in the Display settings -> preset -> customize presets (when you click on the preset list). Default sRGB profile has a brightness of 80cd.

                        sRGB doesn't do anything to reduce dithering, maybe its just me.

                        14 days later

                        I find I can use my MBP M1 with a monitor and it's fine for hours. If I mirror to Apple TV, I feel it. Can use a 2017 MB 12" for hours and all older Macs. Feel like problem lies in P3 color gamut Macs, (and old iPhones, unless its 12 or lower model on full brightness with display accommodations). Tried sRGB no avail, and a better display, going to try Karthi3219s settings in the morning. MBP M1 has been a paperweight as I use this slow (but small) MB12

                        Trying it now via @karthi3219 settings. See how it goes, will know in an hour if its bad but for now feels ok. Seems to definetly be outputting sRGB. I use this page to test, not sure how scientific it is but https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/, still the chance it dithers the srgb for whatever reason.

                        how do you feel about setting the dummy display to something other than 1920 x 1200, personal preference?

                        For what it's worth I find the M1 display bearable with these settings:

                        • Antialiasing set to 0 in terminal. Also affects Firefox after reboot.
                        • Firefox as it has more reasonable antialiasing and scrolling behavior
                        • Default Apple XDR 1600 nits profile
                        • BetterDisplay config to allow increasing the brightness beyond the original
                        • Battery settings in Sonoma, Low Power for both
                        • Bright yellow cursor that is easy to follow
                        • These color settings in BetterDisplay

                        3 months later
                        dev