macsforme This was before Stillcolor, but I sold mine after trying to use it for almost a year and doing a good amount of harm to my eyes/brain. I had purchased it new, planning for it to be an investment for several years, so I took quite a loss on it
Yep this is exactly my same experience
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Yes, forgot to add I also have True Tone and Night Shift off.
'disable IOMFB auto-contrast with the Terminal workaround' Sorry, can you tell me how to do this? Tried searching but didn't see it.
Sorry for not following the thread for a bit, just saw some of your questions now. Feel free to contact me with anything at the BetterDisplay app's Discord channel (https://discord.gg/aKe5yCWXSp) or in a GitHub discussion, I regularly monitor those. 
But I'll follow this one as well as much as I can!
"is this reduction in "color resolution" while streaming coming from an intentional decision in BetterDisplay? or is it something that macOS is adding itself in the way it handles screen capture and video decoding"
Do you have a screenshot for it? Local streaming does not use any kind of compression (it does a simple copy) and full RGB pixel format should be used so it should not look strange. I can change the pixel mode to 8 or 10 bit RGB or YCbCr 4:2:0 limited or full. The latter two does not make sense and reduce the color quality significantly.
The app uses some buffering (3 frames) which does introduce a slight lag indeed (it was mentioned somewhere in the thread as an issue if I recall correctly) - I can lower it or add an option for it but that might introduce some choppiness if there is any for any reason. Since
"doing this will make your password screen after resuming from sleep "blank" since the streamed display window can't show there — the password field is offscreen. instead you can just blindly Touch ID/type password and press enter though and it'll still work."
There is na option Disconnect virtual screens upon lock or screen saver and connect when returning to the desktop - precisely to solve the issue of lock screen password for streamed virtual screens. It is under Settings/Displays/Overview/Advanced virtual screen settings…It is also possible to add a keyboard shortcut to start/stop streams or hide streams quickly so you can have access the the desktop if somehow the stream covers the only main real display.
waydabber Do you have a screenshot for it? Local streaming does not use any kind of compression (it does a simple copy) and full RGB pixel format should be used so it should not look strange.
Alright, thanks for letting me know about the the Discord chat, I will join soon and discuss further in DMs there
In my case on the M1 MacBook Air on Ventura 13.6.6, the compression or "subsampling" of color data between the virtual screen and the target (internal display) is easily visible and is possible to compare even in screenshots!
"Luminance" data is the same between displays but "color" data is more imprecise in the stream, similar to YCbCr, so it's certainly odd that this is happening for me despite the confirmation that you're using RGB and not intentionally compressing it on your part.
I'll collect some screenshots and send them to you later today 
️
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Thank you! I'll certainly look at it. I can also provide test builds with different pixel formats specified if needed.
Rowe Here it is (requires BetterDisplay installed and running)
while true; do /Applications/BetterDisplay.app/Contents/MacOS/BetterDisplay set -namelike=built -framebufferNumericProperty=0x0 -specifier=IOMFBContrastEnhancerStrength; sleep 2; done
Just run this in a Terminal window and leave that Terminal window minimized in the background
It will zero out the IOMFB contrast enhancer every 2 seconds to prevent auto-contrast from activating in bright conditions (which otherwise would usually happen, even if auto-brightness is off)
If you want to verify that this is actually doing something, you can see what the display would look like with contrast enhancement by substituting in
-framebufferNumericProperty=9063. Notice how the screen feels "brighter" and there are suddenly "strange blobs that move around" in response to where the cursor is.Of course, after testing, quit that Terminal window and run the actual command to set it to
0x0instead.
I've only tested this on my M1 Air BTW so I'm not sure if this will work in the exact same way on your MBP.
I discovered yesterday what I think "Uniformity2D" is actually intended to do, at least on non-Pro machines. It helps reduce color shifts from off-axis viewing angles. It's subtle, but once you see what to look for, it's pretty noticeable. The effect is much more significant on my M2 MBA 15, but once you've seen it, it's also visible (although much, much more subtle) on my M2 Pro TB.
The downside to it are the faint blotches that appear in some circumstances that DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs first observed. It's a tradeoff I guess. I think on balance it's better to keep it on, at least on non-Pro machines.
DannyD2 it's also visible (although much, much more subtle) on my M2 Pro TB.
interesting it didn't do anything on either M2 TB Pro I tested (both the usable "00000000 panel" one and the straining "FMX panel" one), there were no blotches at all even with it off and there was no difference in colors, unlike the two M2 Airs I tested where I could actually see the screen change in response to the setting
DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I should have been clearer… I haven't been able to reproduce the blotches on the M2 Pro TB, but there is a subtle shift in greenish tones towards the edges of the display when viewed off-axis when Uniformity2D is disabled. You have to really look for it though, unlike the MBA where it's more obvious.
I have a 14" M2 Pro MBP and, interestingly, with Apple Studio Display Stillcolor increases eye strain for me. The monitor image starts too look "uncomfortable" and I get a sensation in my vision as if something is off.
ASD has been my #1 monitor in terms of eye strain for many months, but it still causes eye strain after a couple of hours of use (patching helps but doesn't completely eliminate the symptoms).
I tested Stillcolor with my 2nd best monitor, Dell P2723QE, and after almost a week of use I can say that Dell P2723QE + Stillcolor has become my #1 monitor. Dell P2723QE uses 8-bit + FRC, but from what I was able to find, it shouldn't use FRC if it's receiving an 8-bit color signal. To be honest, I get so little eye strain and eye dryness that it's hard to believe this is actually happening. Since I'm getting such results so consistently, I can't attribute this to any other factors.
Dell S2722QC also looks really interesting, because it has very similar features, and it seems to support 8-bit color without FRC. But for now I don't have reasons to try it out (but I might someday out of curiosity).
As mentioned by others earlier, Stillcolor on the built-in 14" M2 Pro MBP display doesn't seem to affect eye strain/comfort for me too.
@aiaf This is such an impressive work. Saying a massive thank you just doesn't do its justice. You should really set up a way to provide donations as this is literally changing people's lives (including mine) because of how debilitating eye strain can be.
rpozarickij if your getting those results with the dell monitor than id imagine a Mac mini would be the perfect combo since it forces you to use a external monitor
Anyone try Stillcolor with Sonoma 14.5? TIA.
Is anyone here emf sensitive? Just wondering if there's a connection between that and eyestrain sensitivities.
Rikl I have, and it seems to work fine per the output of ioreg. I didn’t have any reason to re-test it with a capture card, though.
Took a break from reverse engineering here as the display has been pretty good, and some other things needed focus. Still tons of stuff that can be figured out and solved as per one of the last posts if someone is still pushing.
Are anyone aware of any site with a proper tracking of what files are changed with the mac upgrades? It's fairly easy to track it, but it would be interesting to see on what updates what happened.
I didn't update to 14.5 yet, but would like to know what files changes, as well as a diff of the ioreg output. There are significant changes in ioreg between Mac versions that shows when they implemented new stuff.
Could someone with temporal dithering / PWM causing red eyes report if this Stillcolor works for them?
NEW m1 air finding @aiaf
IOMFBBrightnessCompensationEnable is true by default. setting it to false fixes "greenish" tint, the screen will now appear more red and more natural colors. this is a pretty big discovery as it even affects pure white meaning that with it on by default the white used to not actually be "true" white.
interesting thing is that toggling this doesn't seem to affect banding at all, which means it was probably using some additional temporal dithering-like method to achieve the "brightness compensation". so setting it to false probably reduces flicker even further. i feel noticeably more comfortable looking at a white background with it off while testing it toggling back and forth
Edit: Yeah this definitely improves things, before when I looked at light gray it almost felt like "looking at both bluish gray and reddish gray at the same time", almost as if both of my eyes were getting a different color each, which was really uncomfortable to look at. after turning brightness compesnation off it looks like the gray is purely made out of only a red tint instead which feels so much more natural to me
finally, also reporting that i was wrong saying before that turning off uniformity2D """doesn't do anything""" on m1 air, just tested it again and it actually does change things, so reccomended that m1 air users turn it off as well!
Been a while since I've followed developments with StillColor. A few days ago, I've discovered that my m2 mbp tb is showing significant pixel flicker on blooey's test chart. In a previous post I showed it has almost no flicker which you said looked simply like camera noise. Now it is clearly showing flicker just like the a pc running windows 11. StillColor is activated, sonoma 14.4.1. Testing done with same 240fps camera as last time.
I think people should continue testing on a periodic basis even after they think they finally found a "safe" setup.
Previous post: https://ledstrain.org/d/2686-i-disabled-dithering-on-apple-silicon-introducing-stillcolor-macos-m1m2m3/750
photon78s was the last time you tested on a different macos version?
