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

Rikl

All recent screens seem to bother my eyes. I think that the intense backlight is the culprit.

I bought the M1 air right after it was released and it always bothered my eyes. I tried all the usual stuff, even a matte blue light defuser but no help.

I even bought a M2 air thinking my issue might be PWM, but it was worse for me so I returned it.

So, I've been hardly using it until Stillcolor.

Now, I am using BetterDisplay and FontSmoothingAdjuster and a Whitepoint reduced ColorLCD profile. Also I use DarkReader on Firefox and Thunderbird - not Dark Mode MacOS.

But Stillcolor really made the difference for me. I can use the screen for hours with hardly any fatigue. I even removed the defuser and can use the glossy screen again.

You done good aiaf.

Applesexual

I had this application installed and enabled when I logged in today, but I checked the terminal and it says dithering was enabled. Very strange.

I disabled the app and reenabled it. I'll see if there are any improvements.

For anyone reading this thread, I think you should regularly check if dithering is turned off or not in terminal even if you have the application turned on.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

waydabber for example around the notch there is a nearly invisible, very subtle shadow effect by default - it's bands become visible with dithering off, mostly visible with non fully uniform bright moving backgrounds

In the case of these shadow bands that appear around the edge of the screen on mini-LED models after disabling dithering, these can be solved by disabling uniformity2D.

This will both remove the bands and also extremely reduce the "slightly fading to darker at the edges" effect that always bothered me about Apple mini-LED panels!

Disabling uniformity2D would also be a good option to include in BetterDisplay as this edge banding can become especially noticeable with lower Software Brightness.

Applesexual

Writing to report that I don't feel any eyestrain today even while browsing 4chan (text-heavy) and other forums.

Still need to test some more, but I think this app worked.

By the way, do I need to keep my color profile at sRGB or can I change it to the default color LCD?

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

@aiaf @waydabber @async At least on the M2 Air that I'm testing (base model, 8GB 512GB, Ventura 13.3 pre-installed), I feel like there is still some sort of TCON dithering (or just heavy pixel inversion?) present…

Disable dithering is way more effective on here than the Pro for sure, as it stops the text shimmer, and makes a number of screen elements feel a lot more still.

However, even after disabling dithering, I can still perceive text flicker with my eyes (but not as much "shimmer in certain areas" as with dithering enabled, as it now feels more like a uniform flicker). I feel this flicker despite there being no PWM when filmed on camera at 240hz, and I don't feel this on other, better laptops. And even though some elements are certainly more still, others still feel unstable.

Overall, the quality of this screen especially with Stillcolor is way better than any mini-LED device, and even as far as modern Apple LCDs go I'd totally take this over my iPhone SE 2, since it does not have that "seasickness" or extremely strong "stick in my eye" feeling to the display that the SE has.

But since I'm still noticing the screen feel pretty unstable in specific situations (usually with lighter colors, darker colors actually feel the most stable), and certain text is still much harder to read than on a known good Mac with a working dither disable method — 2015 12" MacBook, Mojave 10.14.6, dither=0 (which actually improves the screen very noticeably on this specific Intel Mac despite not working on some others) — this isn't good enough for me to keep this laptop.

Not sure if anything would change with Sonoma as I've currently kept the stock Ventura 13.3 on it.

Because the M2 Air is marketed as having "billions of colors", compared to the M2 Touch Bar entry-level MacBook Pro with "millions of colors" (despite both supporting the desktop at 10bpc in the OS), I suspect that there is still some (more mild) level of TCON-level FRC and color alterations present on the M2 Air.

The non-uniform "blotchy" color calibration that becomes very noticeable after dithering is disabled on the M2 Air also furthers this theory, as I don't think that can usually can't be achieved through just OS-level ColorSync color management. EDIT: Nope, this might be true for Pro models, but this actually IS (at least in a controllable sense) OS-level on the Air! See my reply two messages below

By the way, high chance I can get a M2 Touch Bar MBP side by side tomorrow to compare!

Please lmk if there's any data I should dump or commands I should run on this machine before I return 🙂

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

aiaf These have a high chance of relating to local dimming in some way — because a method to somewhat "freeze" local dimming (that doesn't fully work though, since the backlight will still dynamically change on some greyish areas, most noticeable with very low Software Brightness) is to enable BLMStandbyEnable, which most certainly stands for "backlight modulation standby enable".

However, even with pretty thorough testing with software brightness, test patterns, etc. I couldn't observe any change with my own eyes or my level of strain messing the other two backlight modulation settings.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

@waydabber @aiaf Interesting!! uniformity2D=off actually is relevant for more than just mini-LED Macs👀👀

Disabling uniformity2D on the M2 Air actually fixes & eliminates blotchy colors that usually become visible in some dark shades of gray when dithering is disabled!

This actually has even more of an effect on the Air than it had on the Pro, given that on the Pro it was only able to eliminate fade effects at the edge of the screen.

waydabber

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I can add a toggle to the app to change uniformity2D for built-in displays as it does not seem to be a particularly dangerous setting (just like enableDither) which could cause any issues. The effect is super-subtle though so most users probably would not understand what it is for. It might be better simply to combine that setting with the dither one as with dither off the uniformity2D looks much worse anyway. What do you think?

I removed the toggle to turn local dimming on/off from BetterDisplay (a build with that in it will be accessible in the pre-release build list though) as I could not make it work perfectly and can't fully prevent lockup/crash situations with it and I don't want to leave such things in the app. The effect can still be turned off using CLI to directly toggle framebuffer properties for those who want to tinker with it anyway.

DannyD2

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs That's really interesting. I'll give it a try on my M2 Air 15-inch this weekend and see if I can replicate.

Any theory about what Uniformity2D does under the hood? Is it maybe some kind of low frequency blur kernel, where areas offscreen are treated as black? Also, does Uniformity2D have any effect on external monitors?

async

waydabber Should probably adjust the name for GPU Dithering while you are there, so it is clear if clicking it enables or disables it

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

waydabber It might be better simply to combine that setting with the dither one as with dither off the uniformity2D looks much worse anyway.

Yeah it definitely makes sense to me too to combine disabling dithering and disabling uniformity2D into one toggle

waydabber

async

Should probably adjust the name for GPU Dithering while you are there, so it is clear if clicking it enables or disables it

Hmm. But it is is already called "GPU Dithering".

UPDATE: Oh, you mean it is confusing this way? The toggles are supposed to work like it's active when they have an accent color and inactive when gray. This design language comes from Control Center.

markdotpeters5

Tested Stillcolor on my M1 Air with an LG 27UL850w - doesn't seem to do anything on the banding test.

Using Betterdisplay with a virtual display does though.. noticeably more banding and seems more comfortable.

DannyD2

markdotpeters5 If displayspecifications.com is accurate, what you're seeing is expected. That's an 8 bit+FRC monitor that can accept 10 bit wide input. Betterdisplay+virtual slices off the lower 2 bits so you're going to see more banding.

async

waydabber Yea I know, but here you activate the disabling, Or at least I think so. In which case it should probably be named Disable GPU Dithering. I didn't mean that the name should change.

Just realized that you probably read the value and have it on by default if it is enabled. All good then 😂

waydabber

async Yes, of course the icon always shows the proper status (the app reads the value). 😃

waydabber

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I added a separate toggle (available for built-in Liquid Retina displays on Apple Silicon). https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/issues/2815

(I am not sure whether the setting is used/working on the old M1 MBA, 13" MBP or the iMac, if it is, I can enable it for notchless built-in screens as well).

Rikl

waydabber

M1 Air

ioreg -lw0 | grep -i uniformity

markdotpeters5

DannyD2 thanks that makes sense. Not sure it’s comfortable enough for me to use but giving it another go tomorrow.

waydabber

Rikl Thanks!

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