aiaf I use the built in display, as I need to be mobile often with work. Also it exercises my eyes further. Its Macbook pro 15in 2018 and I still run Mojave 10.14.2 on it. If you ever noticed the eye exercise approach, feel free to check here on my blog (heteroforie.webnode.cz, there is also a working easier road that @mike took with eye patching). I was always hoping for a tech solution, but also was intrigued what separates me from people who are completely unaffected. Tech solution never came, so I went the road of eye exercising.

Having an option to turn off dithering even on this old setup, or at least on the intel chip with updated macos would be a lifechanger. Is it too difficult to implement the intel chips into your solution at the moment? I received some donations from people here for my work, so would love to donate as well, in case you would need that to keep working.

You know, also with the apple petition and what not, you could make Apple implement it into accesibility options for all macs and iPhones etc. That would be something. If this could work and keep up with all future updates, it could finally feel like my future is not stolen anymore, which has been the general feel of this issue despite the eye exercises discovery.

      So my friend tried still color on his MacBook air m1 2020. He has a Boox Mira eink monitor connected to it and you can see how it flickers but then when stillcolor is enabled (dithering off) the flickering stops.. BUT when he moves the cursor the rest of the screen still flickers? Is that some sort of SW flickering or is that the nature of Eink. Check the video below (there's sound too of him explaining it) https://imgur.com/a/r9kT9uq

        macsforme I'm actually still not sure what kind of signal macOS is outputting. The output from AllRez is all over the place, alternating between 16bpc and 10bpc, while the pixel encoding says 8-bits. Technically an 8-bit signal with dithering is still 8 bits and fits within a 10-bit format. Regardless of color depth, Apple applies temporal dithering as a final step before sending the signal, even to displays that perform their own FRC. See aiaf

            jordan I have a Boox Mira (13 inch version). The flicker when you move the mouse cursor is probably a different thing, related to how it drives the e-ink display. (I get the mouse flicker on Windows machines too.)

              DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs This is all very interesting! Re. part 1, I completely agree, it was extremely difficult to focus on words on the internal display with dithering enabled. It's like trying to focus on the sun.

              I'm waiting for my Carson microscope to arrive to conduct additional testing on the display. I very much doubt an additional layer of dithering, but I won't put it past Apple 🤣

              Re. part 2:
              Inspecting the output from AllRez reveals a hundreds of properties which are all cryptic to me, but can be related to your findings. Properties like temperature compensation, brightness compensation, force pixel backlight modulation, etc

              Re. white being dithered, all the evidence so far points that no color is safe from dithering. Apple's dithering is not regular FRC.

                  jordan super interesting, thanks a lot for this video! I don't know what that flicker is when his mouse moves, certainly looks to be of a different magnitude. I did not see any additional dithering with my capture card when I moved my mouse.

                      aiaf Inspecting the output from AllRez reveals a hundreds of properties which are all cryptic to me, but can be related to your findings. Properties like temperature compensation, brightness compensation, force pixel backlight modulation, etc

                      Is it possible to capture the output of AllRez and share it with me?

                      • aiaf replied to this.

                          aiaf of course!! maybe it's just how eink works I'm not sure myself. Just figured to post the vid in case it could help in any way haha.

                              Was planning in getting an m3 air and studio display soon. Would the studio display benefit from this too?

                              jordan

                              Can't wait to see more investigation with a mac mini and external monitors particularly if 6 bit output can be achieved. Some monitors are still 6 bit + FRC.

                                jordan his e-ink display is in high speed (not HD) mode, which uses dithering to achieve everything between pure black and white, instead of displaying true grayscale.

                                only HD mode on boox truly eliminates dithering. (this is why the "fast" modes look a lot less high resolution too or seem to cause jagged edges around text)

                                what you're seeing here is that effect, i get it on my boox device too whenever there's movement, so it's coming from e-ink and not macOS.

                                the style of dithering used on e-ink isn't the worst thing to me because the screen still remains entirely still when nothing is happening i.e. when i'm trying to read, and i actually like how it's visibly obvious instead of trying to appear "invisible" as this makes my eyes understand it more.

                                but definitely dithering on e-ink is still something to be aware of when getting into e-ink devices lol, not a lot of people talk about it. but when an e-ink screen is still, nothing should be happening, which is the thing that matters most!

                                    DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs oh wow thanks for clarifying that! I'll let him know. I had no idea!

                                    When I used a Boox tab ultra and Hisense a7cc it would kill my brain so it must be dithering with eink then..yikes

                                        aiaf so my friend was testing his Mac internal screen more with still color he says it feels better if he mirrors his eink monitor to internal screen. He said even with stillcolor and not mirroring it feels less comfortable 🤔 still color helps but stillcolor + mirroring makes it a lot more comfortable.

                                        wonder if this is similar to the people who say better display mirroring helps. Wonder what it could be!

                                          aiaf I know that its 8bit from the specification on asus and displayspecification.com. Also this panel from 2017-2018 the are when FRC was not that popular haha. I'm getting slight nausea effect and very slight eye strain, I would say the same as I get it before with mac mini or any other macbooks with apple silicon connected to my monitor.

                                            aiaf I'm waiting for my Carson microscope to arrive to conduct additional testing on the display. I very much doubt an additional layer of dithering, but I won't put it past Apple 🤣

                                            Hi, very interesting work! I have been experimenting with my MacBook Pro 16" M1 using Stillcolor and a microscope. What's interesting is that I see temporal dithering when Stillcolor is disabled, but unfortunately also when enabled. I haven't found a color shade yet where I can see the difference in temporal noise when enabled. And yet, when viewing the Lagos LCD Gradient, I can clearly see banding appear and disappear. And still temporal dithering always seems to remain under microscope.

                                            I wonder if on the M1 MacBooks, Stillcolor is removing a spatial (static) dithering layer, but the animated temporal dithering remains. I need to do more testing, and still am looking for where I might have gone wrong. But I just thought I would drop in and share what it seems like I have seen so far. It's hard to argue with the results of your video time-blend.

                                                Blooey can you try better display and mirror your screen to see if it eliminates temporal dithering?

                                                    Blooey

                                                    I just tested a Mac Mini M2 using my 240fps cam/microscope setup and I can confirm I see flickering even when Stillcolor is enabled. 🙁

                                                    The Mac is connected via a usb-c to displayport cable to a LG monitor (LG 27gp95r-b) running at 144Hz. Color profile is set to sRGB. This monitor shows less flicker but still some after the latest windows update (Win 11 Home Build 22631.3235) when connected to my Legion 7i PC. I think that latest Windows update introduced more flicker but I'm still testing this.

                                                    In addition to screen mirroring, try using the computer via OBS studio on a known true 8-bit panel secondary computer running a older OS/gpu driver with the new computer connected to a cheap USB capture card.

                                                        jordan I had never used BetterDisplay, but I followed the instructions on their GitHub. I think I created a mirrored virtual display, of the main display, mirrored back onto the main display. Which is pretty wild.

                                                        But that combined with, and without Stillcolor, I still have temporal dithering under the microscope. Again, I can't yet say for certain the source of this flicker, but it has all the signs of temporal color dithering, using frame rate control.

                                                          photon78s I just tested a Mac Mini M2 using my 240fps cam/microscope setup and I can confirm I see flickering even when Stillcolor is enabled. 🙁

                                                          This could be PWM or LCD Inversion or something that's not temporal dithering. See @Seagull very insightful post here.

                                                          jordan So my friend tried still color on his MacBook air m1 2020. He has a Boox Mira eink monitor connected to it and you can see how it flickers but then when stillcolor is enabled (dithering off) the flickering stops.. BUT when he moves the cursor the rest of the screen still flickers? Is that some sort of SW flickering or is that the nature of Eink. Check the video below (there's sound too of him explaining it) https://imgur.com/a/r9kT9uq

                                                          Awesome stuff. The mouse cursor effect is also discussed in this old thread about using a Paperlike screen to detect dithering.

                                                              jordan did it feel OK in HD mode? boox devices only dither in the other "fast" modes

                                                              however, it's definitely hard to use a boox device entirely in HD because it runs at only about 3 frames a second in that mode lol

                                                              (and it will switch in and out of HD every time you scroll, which i really wish i could disable)

                                                              another huge factor about e-ink is lighting. the type of lights in your home actually matters even more for naturally lit displays… if your lightbulbs are flickering LEDs, the boox will "basically become PWM too" as it's illuminated by whatever light is in the room. this becomes really important if you're using it in a lot of other places with random lighting conditions. (using it outside in sunlight avoids this issue!)

                                                              another thing to note is that i can totally see why e-ink can cause eye strain if someone is sensitive to "visible" flashes as well… because in all modes, you get that full, obvious flash from white»black»white whenever you press the "full screen refresh" button. (i'm fine with this, since it's not a flash of "illuminated" light, but i can see how it can be annoying)

                                                              and of course, dither is used in all non-HD modes as all shades of gray get turned into super dense patterns of black dots instead.

                                                              however, i'm not actually sure if the "moving" aspect when scrolling etc. is actually temporal dithering… since it seems to occur in only in some "triangle-shaped" areas near something that's moving, and other dithered areas remain still.

                                                              possibly it's a technical necessity to have interference in adjacent pixels etc. for however the screen is able to perform an update so fast. or maybe it is temporal dithering, i'm not really sure tbh

                                                                dev