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

The verdict: I am going with the M2 Touch Bar Pro. Would also recommend M1 Air — as it should have basically the same basic LCD screen tech as the M2 TB Pro without the different backlight arrangement, extra color calibration, and whatever possible effects the "billion color" marketing entails that would come with the M2 Air.

Despite some of the downsides such as really uneven panel calibration on my unit, the Touch Bar (which needs to be blacked out to eliminate PWM), blurrier image at first glance (but maybe this is because my eyes can actually relax? because the image actually starts to become clearer the longer I use it) — the M2 TB Pro gives me noticeably less eye strain than both the refurb M2 Air and base model M2 Air. The intense PWM-like flicker that even affected the really well calibrated panel of the refurb M2 Air is not present at all on the M2 TB Pro.

The more I use either M2 Air, the more I get this pressure in my left eye — very similar to using OLED screens with PWM. This is probably coming from the screen flicker I can catch on camera.

The pressure isn't present at all on the M2 TB Pro, using it feels just like using a "decent-to-good Intel Mac". The M2 TB Pro is a machine I would say you could upgrade from an Intel Mac to, and as long as dithering is disabled with Stillcolor, you wouldn't notice a difference.

Stillcolor is also 100% working on the M2 TB Pro. Even though it also worked really well on the M2 Airs, making a lot of elements still (especially true on the one with the better panel of the two), I could still notice things like "a totally static non-blinking text cursor feel like it was moving a tiny bit", possibly due to the PWM-like screen flicker. However, non-blinking text cursors are entirely still on the M2 TB Pro.

So here's what it comes down to:

Want a fully usable Apple Silicon laptop?

#1: Get an M1 Air, M2 Touch Bar Pro, or M1 Touch Bar Pro, install Stillcolor, disable the Touch Bar (if applicable) and keep above 75% brightness for zero PWM. These are likely to be the most comfortable Apple Silicon laptop that ever will be made — and possibly may be more comfortable to you than even many newer Intel Macs. Stillcolor works perfectly on the M2 Touch Bar Pro and is very likely to also work perfectly on the M1 Air and M1 Touch Bar Pro.

To me, the M2 Touch Bar Pro with Stillcolor is much more comfortable than the 2015 15" Retina MacBook Pro with AMD dGPU, 2018 Retina MacBook Air, and the 2020 Intel MacBook Pro.

#2: You can try an M2 Air or M3 Air but your mileage may vary. There are many good things and are still hundreds of times better than mini-LED, but PWM-like screen flickering or the different style of backlight used behind the display may be deal-breakers. If something feels off about it, just try a laptop from #1 instead.

#3: Do NOT buy any MacBook Pro with an XDR mini-LED display. These screens are currently unfixable even with Stillcolor because of the complexity of local dimming and unknown extra TCON-level FRC, and are some of the least comfortable displays I've ever used in my life — IMO, they're even worse than OLED.

async Agreed, it improved my M1 Max in a noticeable way. However, not "fixed" in the slightest though.

I'm actually pretty sure the reason why it improved is not related to PWM or dithering but actually because of some change to variable refresh rate frame timing — the mini-LED frame rate feels a lot more even now on Sonoma, there is less judder. This is especially true on forced 60hz mode, before it used to feel like "120hz emulating 60hz", but now it feels a lot more like "real 60hz" in terms of frame timing to my eyes.

This makes me think the improvements that come with Sonoma may only apply to mini-LED models.

@async Instead of an M2 Air, I'd recommend you pick up an M1 Air to start for your trial, since it has the most similar display in all regards to the M2 Touch Bar Pro but without the Touch Bar. Install Stillcolor and let me know how it works!

By the way, since I realized I didn't state this earlier:

PWM-like screen flickering on camera on dark gray colors is present on both M2 Airs(!) Both the base model with the greenish-yellow screen with tons of glare, and the refurbished model with the reddish screen with much less glare have the same screen flickering problem when displaying the same problematic images and webpages on at least Ventura 13.6.6.

In addition, you can even notice similar flickering on pure white if you turn your camera exposure very far down before recording in slo-mo!

The reason this was likely not caught by reviewers (and some users here) is that it can only be easily captured on certain colors. However, this does not seem to line up with any form of a temporal dithering pattern, and dithering is disabled on both, which is what makes this flicker anomaly so confusing.

Will upgrade the refurb M2 Air to Sonoma and test one final time soon to see if screen flicker is still present.

Edit: it's still present after upgrading to Sonoma.

On the other hand, no screen flickering is present on camera at all on the M2 Touch Bar Pro when displaying the same images and colors at the same brightness level on the same Ventura 13.6.6 version.

DannyD2 I guess my eyes are just that sensitive — it was the very first thing I noticed the moment I disabled dithering while looking at a fullscreen banding test pattern.

I legitimately feel like a lot of our issues with screens are due to our eyes being "too good", and not vice versa — like, doctors say my eyes are totally fine, and I feel like I pick up on so many details that others do not. It sometimes feels like I see "everything at once" at the same exact level of priority and nothing is filtered out. It feels like everything that was designed "to not be seen by the human eye" (due to the "flicker fusion threshold" or vision persistence, etc.) I can end up being able to perceive in some manner anyway.

This is probably why these screen effects are so hard on me because I immediately notice every single one of them. Like, I even see the RGB subpixel fringing around text on OLED displays, and I wonder "why does everyone think OLED is so good?" because text looks so much more "rainbowy" and less accurate to me on OLED due to this. But I 100% bet that most of the population doesn't even see this or notice it…

But this is also why finding a good screen feels so satisfying, it feels like I can finally take advantage of the capability of my vision, everything starts looking so INTENSELY information dense, like "multiple repeating occurrences of an image all being equally visible all at once". This is what I wish every screen could feel like.

DannyD2 Yeah I'm pretty sure it's behind what some people have called the "M2 Air dirty screen effect" on Reddit and the like. Especially because the blotches "are still there" but "blurred out" to the point of not easily being recognizable when temporal dithering is enabled and is able to make them look really subtle by rendering them more "precisely" than just the limits of 8-bit color.

Of course, that means that all of these "blotch" patches are flickering even more than the rest of the display when temporal dithering is enabled, basically making the screen feel even weirder and more disorienting to someone who's screen sensitive if all settings are left at Apple's defaults.

I suspect the position and size of these blotches are probably calibrated differently per each M2 Air depending on what backlight bleed levels are detected at the factory etc.

The XDR mini-LED Pros actually have a very similar effect, but only the "fade to darker" bands at the very edges get removed on XDR Pros when disabling uniformity2D. The extra blotches (which are square shaped on XDR Pros instead of blobby) actually remain on XDR Pros even after disabling it, probably because they may be implemented even deeper at the TCON level when XDR & mini-LED is involved.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I legitimately feel like a lot of our issues with screens are due to our eyes being "too good", and not vice versa — like, doctors say my eyes are totally fine, and I feel like I pick up on so many details that others do not. It sometimes feels like I see "everything at once" at the same exact level of priority and nothing is filtered out. It feels like everything that was designed "to not be seen by the human eye" (due to the "flicker fusion threshold" or vision persistence, etc.) I can end up being able to perceive in some manner anyway.

Got this HD effect as well. Comes and goes a lot. Experimented with Noopept years ago that is known to induce that exact effect, and had some pretty significant experiences on what it feels like when it goes too far in that direction. It's like vieweing 10.000 trees in the distant forest at once and getting super annoyed by lines going into the distance moving up and down when you walk. To this day I absolutely hate low framerate content and movies as movements stutter.

If you want to tumble down the rabit hole just search for NMDA receptors (not MDMA) together with visual snow, noopept, asperger, adhd etc. Tons of weird stuff going on in the brain, and there is an infinite amount on studies on how visual processing works and can break. Tbh I wouldn't be suprised if a rather large percentage here at some point did drugs, had a mild brain injury, a mild autoimmune issue after covid, or has asperger / adhd. Even tho most focus here is on fixing what gives symptoms and that monitors / lights makes it worse after too much exposure there is always an mostly neurochemical explanation for what goes on, and in many cases it can be improved. Try some magnesium threonate, Q10, carbohydrates, a few deep breaths and put a weighted blanket on your legs so they don't spam input and see what it feels like.

https://mad.science.blog/2020/10/19/2-dimensional-vision-after-noopept/
https://mad.science.blog/2020/08/21/flicker-the-mechanisms-of-temporal-acuity/

The effect you described where on one of the monitor you don't seem to process what is outside of the focused vision is pretty similar to what I get at times. I credited it to ditering or flickering simply providing too much input that isn't ignored early enough, and it feels like a "bandwidth" limitation. Similar to other things I experience, and I at some point ended up with an asperger diagnosis.

async It's like vieweing 10.000 trees in the distant forest at once and getting super annoyed by lines going into the distance moving up and down when you walk.

For me I've had this effect before but thankfully have always experienced it in a really GOOD context "that was not forced", like when my eyes are feeling particularly nice on some day and I can both see this AND completely be able to process it in a relaxed state. That's the best feeling ever and it feels like what ideal vision truly should be like for me.

When I don't see this my brain usually just doesn't process the whole thing and just goes more tunnel vision, so when my field of view has expanded THAT much, it's actually a really good sign for me and screens will usually start looking a lot better too. Not sure if I would call this version of an expanded field of vision "2D" because usually, stuff looks way more 3D at these times with super enhanced depth perception, in contrast to my more frequently occurring "handicapped" tunnel vision state where I can tell stuff looks flatter than it should and it's hard to process depth.

Irlen spectral filters are really effective for me in inducing this "really good feeling, more 3D version" of the "intensely high information density" feeling in real life/outdoors contexts.

On the other hand, using bad screens like mini-LED makes it likely for this feeling to go away and my field of vision (even off of the computer) to start getting more and more constrained the more I use a bad screen.

async Tbh I wouldn't be suprised if a rather large percentage here at some point did drugs, had a mild brain injury, a mild autoimmune issue after covid, or has asperger / adhd.

I won't say much here but I caught a very rare, serious autoimmune disease over a decade ago, it's been gone for years now but has obviously had long lasting residual effects and yeah is probably the reason behind a lot of this for me. I have never done drugs. I also don't have autism or aspergers at all but I do have adhd.

Skimmed the articles you linked and yep I definitely have a higher temporal perception "by default" lol, flicker fusion is certainly much higher for me than it is in other people.

I also totally agree with the idea of strobe therapy as long as someone doesn't have problems looking at it, and the strobe light is "visible" and not trying to hide itself —

Brcause I don't have epilepsy at all, I swear that staring straight at e.g. that one linked YouTube video with the intense black and white flash actually felt relaxing to me and made my vision feel better & smoother (less jittery motion blur when turning my head for example) after watching it. Visible flashing like strobe lights actually help me, but invisible flashing like PWM hurts me.

madmozg I took a bunch of videos, will compile them into something I can share later.

Setting the "Stone" preset solid color option for the wallpaper is a good test color to observe the PWM.