I disabled dithering on Apple silicon + Introducing Stillcolor macOS M1/M2/M3

async

Sounds like a reasonable assumption worth pursuing. Not sure how easy it is to follow calls between the frameworks. Seems like it might be possible with Binary Ninja and the dyld plugin, and using the cross reference thing.

Not sure why part of my files are like this. Probably some config stuff. but _kern is probably kernel. Might even be possible to load the frameworks in some debug mode to stop on specific calls to specific parts.

async

There is a KEXT for the TCON here as well, but it doesn't seem to contain a binary for some reaosn.

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleDPDisplayTCON.kext

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

async This is true for a lot of system kexts since from I think around Big Sur-Monterey, iirc they are loaded in dynamically or something along those lines now. Had the same issue trying to find what I think was the IOKit or CoreDisplay kext's binary on Monterey.

Blooey

DannyD2 Since your MacBook Air M2 15" seems to perform perfectly with Stillcolor, I wonder if you can try an experiment.

The test is at pixelinversion.com. This is a new test site with some well designed, and thorough test patterns for LCD Polarity Inversion. People can upvote whichever pattern reveals Polarity Inversion on their machine.

Currently, the 3rd example down flickers on my MacBook Pro M1 16". The image is called Layout: Checkerboard: 2 pixels by 2 pixels_ _Color combination: #009F00 and #000000. Unfortunately the order of images changes as people upvote the most reactive patterns. The flicker is easily visible with the naked eye with my display refreshing at 60 Hz or less. But a slow motion camera can help. I have confirmed this pattern is used by Apple under microscope. Disabling dithering has no effect on the flicker on my machine. This flicker should be Polarity Inversion. But I'm really wondering if it is also a noise component of the pattern Apple is using for FRC dithering.

If you get a chance with your machine, without Stillcolor, can you see flicker on any of these patterns? And if so, does Stillcolor disable, or lessen that flicker?

photon78s

Blooey

So pixelinversion.com. Just a quick glance tells me that Stillcolor seems to not have any significant effect on the pixelinversion.com tests. Many of the green quick tests on the left side pulsate. Very difficult to look at for those sensitive. However the results make sense since my refresh rate is so low (30hz).

Setup is the same LG and m2 mac mini.

async

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Tried to look up some of the stuff. There is an absolutely massive amount of tools and info about patching kexts and other hacks. A lot of in relation to the Hackintosh community. As well as semi related stuff mostly for jailbreaking iOS. Obviously some of it doesn't work anymore with Silicon.

https://github.com/hack-different/apple-knowledge

Blooey

photon78s Sorry, they aren't fun test images. But the test patterns expose the flicker that is always present on LCD panels, but has been hidden in a noise pattern. Whenever someone says they'd like all future displays to be LCD, they clearly are not aware of this trickery. These test images simply mask off the pixels that would normally act 180 degrees out of phase to seemingly canceling out the flicker. But the reality is, we can resolve a single pixel. So to the eye, we are given two flicker signals that need to be combined somewhere in our biology. They have passed the problem along to our biology, as is often the case.

photon78s

Blooey

No worries, I've spend a lot of time on pixel inversion and I somehow forget to test the mac mini setup with that website created by another forum member. To focused on dithering lol. The LG monitor with respect to inversion is easily the worst of my devices and much worse than the internal panel of the legion pro 7i and T480s. Fortunately, using a high bandwidth cable to enable 120fps refresh rate at UHD resolution improves flicker on most of the green areas.

I quoted EPFL (the Swiss research university) on pixel inversion here:
https://ledstrain.org/d/2589-products-to-try-or-avoid-pwm-flicker-and-temporal-dithering-testing/150

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Got the M2 Air. Disable dithering definitely does way more on an Air than it does on an XDR mini-LED Pro.

Going to test a bunch of things before I make any conclusions, but can anyone else here with an M2 Air verify that this also occurs on their model?

I'm on Ventura 13.3 which is what this Air shipped with.

Turn on Stillcolor (check Disable Dithering)
Open https://lcdtech.info/en/tests/dynamic.range.banding.htm on Firefox (it needs to be Firefox because the site uses CSS gradients, which Chrome and Safari apply spatial dithering to but Firefox does not. My Firefox is at default settings)
Screen generally default settings, Color LCD profile, but change resolution to 1280x832 and True Tone off
Zoom into the green gradient with pinch-to-zoom so it fills the whole window
Slowly scroll left to right with the trackpad

Do you notice "blotches" of obviously different shades of green, within each band, that then also begin to move around in sync based on how fast you're scrolling on the trackpad?

Notice how the blotches are no longer visible if you re-enable dithering. (Assuming that the OS is trying to "hide" these blotches by using a bunch of temporally dithered colors to attempt to make the bands look "uniform")

This is not coming from Firefox itself, because if you zoom additionally with the Ctrl+Scroll accessibility shortcut, the location of these blotches remain constant.

I want to know if anyone else with an M2 Air notices this…

I can also notice these blotches on a solid color dark background too. (For example, the solid gray background in Dark Mode of an empty folder in Finder in icon view)

I was surprised to see this effect, because I was assuming any additional color calibration "that doesn't uniformly apply to the whole display" would be something I would only find on XDR mini-LED Pro models. Was not expecting to see this on a laptop that doesn't have any local dimming like the Air. @aiaf

Unlike a relatively similar effect I recently pointed out on a mini-LED Pro, this one is fully visible without having to dim with Software Brightness / squint to see it and such. This one is very obvious (yet only is noticeable when dithering is disabled with Stillcolor)

I wonder if this is connected to the "dirty screen effect" that some on Reddit, etc. have noticed with certain M2 Airs? Whites also seem more yellowish on this Air than I expected, even with Night Shift/True Tone off. I will test for backlight bleed soon.

Edit: Tested for backlight bleed, this M2 Air actually doesn't seem to have the "M2 Air backlight bleed issue" at all. Full brightness black background in dark room looks completely uniform except for maybeee a tiny barely brighter area at the bottom right. Not really any bleed on this laptop compared to some of the pics I've seen online of other M2 Airs.

Donux

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs You have missed the most important measure - how do you feel using device 🙂 I personally feel like rotten potato after day or two.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Donux still evaluating but it's a lot better than 14" pro mini led of course. the air doesn't make me feel "seasick" like my pro mini led does

with Stillcolor, better than some intel macs that have temporal dithering too (i think i prefer it over 2015 15" pro AMD, 2018 air with macOS, 2020 intel 13" pro touch bar, since all of those have really heavy temporal dithering)

not sure if as good as my actual working laptops tho (2012 lenovo laptop, 2015 12" macbook, 2018 air but with windows installed and old drivers)

stillcolor actually makes the screen feel more still on the air (which it doesn't do on the pro mini led, so that's progress)

i also much prefer looking at the M2 Air compared to my iPhone SE 2, which is really reassuring because the SE 2 (on iOS 17) is a much worse example of a modern Apple LCD. the SE has way more glare and temporal dithering shimmer than the Air has even at default settings

Blooey

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs It would be helpful to know if someone with an M2 MacBook Air can control any of the inversion test images at pixelinversion.com with Stillcolor. As in, do any of the test images flicker without Stillcolor, but flicker less with Stillcolor?

I’m trying to determine if Apple is combining their color dithering system with polarity inversion mitigation. Will make it easier to identify between the two under the microscope if we know.

The third test pattern down flickers on my MacBook Pro M1 16”.

Donux

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Do you set specific color profile, or you can actually handle Color LCD?

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Blooey I'll try to test this later today 🙂

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Donux Both Color LCD, sRGB, and NULL ICC Profile (installed) all feel the same to me. However, not sure if I really like the screen of this M2 Air 13" anyway.

It's hard to tell because some things that I usually have problems with on dithered screens don't seem to be an issue here, at least with Stillcolor enabled. For example, reading words left to right feels pretty easy, animated UI doesn't distract me from something else I'm trying to look at, wallpapers don't shimmer, and the adaptive color of the menu bar doesn't feel "muddy", and it's much easier than I expected to look at the very left side of the screen.

This laptop doesn't seem to have additional TCON 10bit FRC, I think(?), because BetterDisplay color adjustments cause much more noticeable changes to banding with Stillcolor enabled compared to my mini-LED MacBook Pro.

Disabling dithering seems to actually reduce the screen's bit depth here, compared to on a mini-LED Pro where it still looks like 10bit.

But at the same time, there's definitely issues that are still apparent with me that usually wouldn't affect me on a truly working setup. Looking at vertically repeating content, like a bunch of "import" lines in code looks uneven and it's hard to "focus multiple of them at the same time", backgrounds still feel "uneven" even though they're not really shimmering, looking closely at the screen I see pure white backgrounds flicker (uniformly, so more like a PWM feel than a dithering feel?) even though I can't detect any PWM at all with a slow motion camera. Generally, the screen seems to be harder than expected to focus on and remain clear when I'm just idle and not actively reading something.

The "blotches" that appear with Stillcolor enabled is also really strange and points to some possible extra layer of TCON color calibration occuring, even if it's not related to 10bit FRC.

I will try to find a second M2 Air I can get side-by-side with this one in a few days to see if any of this could also be related to panel variation. It seems like this M2 Air is especially affected by the infamous "yellow tint" screen lottery, the screen looks really yellow even with Night Shift off and True Tone off when placed next to an Intel Mac.

I will be returning this one after I compare it to the other M2 Air. However, I'd say this is still better than some of the Intel Macs that had really aggressive temporal dithering (but on the other hand, noticeably worse than the "good" Intel Macs)

If anyone is wondering, I also tried BetterDisplay mirroring for a bit. Feels the exact same with and without mirroring.

DannyD2

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Regarding the yellow issue, Apple is definitely sourcing the panels from two suppliers. One supplier's panels have a native white point around 6300k (slightly more yellow; see e.g., the RTings review unit for the M2 15-inch) and one supplier's panels have a white point around 6750k (slightly more blue; see e.g., the Notebookcheck review unit for the M2 15-inch). I have the latter, but would actually prefer the one you have. (That being said, I calibrate my display to a D50 white point with a Calibrite/Xrite device to reduce blue light so it ultimately doesn't matter for me.)

async

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs this is extremely similar to my issues. Actually found a bit of improvement again recently. The symptoms comes and goes. It can shift between unstable text, focus issues, blinking white, and glowing text. Then when I get things under control it is almost like the black text is on the exact same plane as the white background. Like the most beautiful flat surface in existance. Or what it feels like for others. This is on an M1 Max.

Would interesting if any of these works for you. All with dithering disabled.

Shining a light on the screen near the text removes the text glow light. As does getting outside reflections on the screen. Probably forces some other pathway to take over, or pushes the amount of input to be ignored high enough that it manages to ignore the other glow. Really, just do some experimentation with different reflections and see if you get the same.
Q10 supplement seemed to provide immediate relief. I'm suspecting something closer to a silent migraine, that is often a result of energy deprivation in the brain.
Avoiding nitrites and similar migraine triggers.
Disabling all color adjustments in the options of BetterDisplay made a huge difference. Especially the extended hdr brightness. They seemed to bring forward a lot of subtle issues with the screen. Color Table stuff even forced software rendering of the cursor that causes dithering and color shifts in a rather large area around it.
Before I disabled it I had pretty good luck with simply adjusting all the color sliders and brightness until the text felt flat against the background every time I used the laptop.
Red cursor with white outline to train focus.
Adjusted my contact prescription to have a slightly bigger difference between the eyes. Didn't expect it to change that fast again. Minor effect compared to the other things tho.
Eyedrops as it can be related to light scattering from both dry and wet eyes.

karut

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs have you considered trying an MacBook Air M3 instead of another M2? Probably the same display although there were some reports of it being more tolerable, some less. But perhaps more interesting than another M2 comparison?

photon78s

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

What is the shutter speed when you use the "slow motion camera" to test PWM. On my phone I can set to 1/24000 second shutter speed to help see PWM. If I don't see any line patterns indicative of flicker, then I use my diy oscilloscope and Opple 4 lightmaster device to check further.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

DannyD2 but would actually prefer the one you have

FYI, it's not really an orange yellow, it's a weird looking "uneven greenish spotty yellow" that only affects light colors but not dark colors.

So what you actually end up getting with my Air for example is blue looking black backgrounds and Dark Mode windows, for example, but then a weird yellow-greenish tint on an icon or the white background of a web page that will keep clashing with each other over and over.

I actually have the same exact yellow tint issue on my iPhone SE and hate it on both of them, it doesn't really feel like "a Night Shift or low blue light effect" to me, it just feels like really ugly and inconsistent colors that make white feel both washed out and too intense at the same time. Again True Tone is off.

Compared my SE 2 to an SE 3 in-store recently and finally proved my SE was affected by yellow tint 😂 the store model had so much less muddy looking white backgrounds with the same exact settings.

Just a warning lol, because for me the bluer and non-yellow tint affected screens have always caused less strain (and I'm saying that even though I do usually prefer warmer colors, for example 2700k instead of 3000k lightbulbs)

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

async

I relate to your symptoms, especially back when I was using my mini-LED MacBook Pro that you also own. (I have the M1 Max too!)

I would honestly recommend to stop using that screen — it was the first computer that ever gave me the realization that my reading difficulties were coming from computer screens themselves, because the mini-LED screen was that bad on my eyes.

For me, the mini-LED MacBook Pro actually caused significant reduction in my ability to process depth and "see multiple objects at once" even in real life. It took quite a few months of using other screens (even other screens that aren't that great… anything is better than the mini-LED internal panel) to regain a lot of my vision abilities lol.

For example, while I was using the mini-LED Pro I was having this issue daily where my eyes would start slowly closing and I had to use a ton of effort to keep them open, and sometimes my eyes would "roll over and back" when trying to move them. It felt like I was constantly about to fall asleep. This continued somewhat even in the hours of the day I was away from the screen.

However, after I stopped using the mini-LED MacBook Pro internal screen for a while and switched to other laptops, I actually don't have this issue at all any more in real life, it's really surprising. Of course, I still get pretty tired and annoyed in rooms with bad LED/flourescent lightbulbs as I'm really sensitive to that, but not totally unable to think like I felt in "the mini-LED era".

Best way to use a mini-LED MacBook Pro is connected to an known good monitor with Stillcolor. (Unfortunately monitors aren't an option for me as I can't stand sitting in one place for the whole day, the ergonomics of laptops works a lot better for me)

Back to the M2 Air:

Air is still way better than the Pro, nowhere near on that level of effect on me. But despite its "standard LCD screen" and Stillcolor, I'm not keeping this Air because it's still obviously presenting reading difficulties that I know, consistently, that I don't experience on truly great laptops.

Stillcolor actually does noticeably fix some stuff like twitching text on the M2 Air, surprisingly! But then other stuff like "repeating text looks uneven" doesn't improve.

Because, here's the thing…

Shining a light on the screen, Q10 supplement, avoiding nitrites, red cursor with white outline to train focus, Adjusted my contact prescription,
Eyedrops

The biggest thing I've learned about LED strain is that I don't want to deal with this because I know I don't have to deal with this.

2012 Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga with Win8.1, 2013 Nexus 7 with Android 6, iPhone 5 with iOS 6.1.3, iPad mini 2 with iOS 10, 2015 12" Retina MacBook with Mojave, any old Nintendo DS or 3DS (except for the DSi for some reason lol)…

All of these old devices I just mentioned have literally no issues for me at all. I can use them for the entire day — and I don't even need my glasses because they already look crisp, pixel-perfect, and stable to my eyes.

I currently use modern-day apps by screen sharing macOS to the screen of my Lenovo laptop, which is a really great benchmark for how using macOS should feel! Basically no issues, screen feels so dense with information and I can focus on repeating patterns and text instantly 🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚 🙂

BTW, I do totally agree with one of your tips, which is to not use color adjustments. This is 100% true, adjusting the color table compresses the color range and can really easily introduce dithering if not careful.

The best way to run a laptop screen is as close to linear gamma as possible, in effect having no color profile! Unfortunately macOS makes this super hard because color calibration is baked into everything in this OS 😭

I even noticed that adjusting the backlight on the M2 Air affects the amount of banding very slightly too, implying that there's more than just the backlight changing when you press the brightness keys. (BTW this isn't coming from BetterDisplay "combined brightness" for anyone wondering, I'm using normal macOS backlight control)

Still on the search for a modern Mac that's on the level of the comfortable devices that I just listed. Going to try the entry level 13" M2 Pro with Touch Bar next, as it only supports millions of colors and does not use mini-LED. If I can't find a usable Apple Silicon Mac I'm unfortunately never buying a Mac again LOL

async

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Blown away by the similarity here. I've had lots of these episodes of extreme somnolence when I get stuck with having to watch something straining. If I force myself thru it I can get to a point where it almost feels like the eyes shut off or I fall asleep while keeping them open. Can also happen while driving in the dark for a long time, without being sleepy in any way. I more or less have to get my body moving for it to clear, so I did suspect some kind of postural / blood pressure effect. Seems to be somewhat genetic. Happens from white rice and milk as well for me, without the need of any visual strain. Strange stuff. Interested in insights on it. Mostly happens after long term effort, so I do suspect it is related to glucose deprivation in some part of the brain. I'll try not turn this thread into a metabolic / genetic chitchat, but I'm happy to discuss it in some other thread if there are a ton of people with really similar symptoms.

Got the same issue with using a monitor as well. I spent 15 years with the legs upright at the desk at work, and are incapable of sitting at a desk. We should meet at some point I guess 😂

When I push things to far with triggers I get excessive flickering from other things like window blinds and stripes. It's cortical hyperexcitability. Search for pattern glare on google images.

You don't happen to have visual snow as well?

Actually stumbled upon this while looking for some patterns. A study that shows that repeat exposure to these hyperexcitability triggers can provide adaptation and reduced strain. So in some cases this constant strive for eliminating all strain might actually make people more sensitive.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6867050/

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