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

macsforme I noticed on newer MacBooks how harsh it is to look at a super bright white element right next to a deep black

and yet, despite these deeper and harsher black levels and extremely bright HDR whites… the most common element on a computer screen is black text on a white background…

this is why computer screens should not be "built like TVs"!

it's really funny to me how a lot of people say "they're not affected" but then also say "ew light mode? that's like staring at the sun! i use dark mode"

y'all, remember when light mode used to look NORMAL? (and was the only option!)

Rikl After your praise of the M2MBTB, I was on the verge of trying one. Now, I don't need to. The M1MBA is usable for me.

Great to hear!

I'm going with the m1air too because the colors and brightness just feels so "normal" on it. With Stillcolor it feels like a good old Intel Mac! (AKA: not "perfect" but very usable, no "heavy" feeling, no intense glare and no headaches!)

The screen feels much more paperlike than the "M2 TB with FMX panel" which is just too glossy like "wet ink".

(I'm pretty sure the "M2 TB with 00000000 panel" was much more comfortable than the FMX one, but both of them have much too deep black levels IMO.)

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m1air PWM is fine to be honest

At this point, m1air is the way I'm going, because the PWM issue is honestly fine for me even though it looks bad on camera — I'm actually liking using it more at lower brightness than higher, so I guess PWM with "this low of a flicker depth" doesn't impact me.

As I was saying, I've had totally usable laptops with the same "PWM on grays" issue, so I can 100% get used to it.

The Windows laptop I swear by and always rely on literally has even more intense PWM on grays shockingly! (But no detectable flicker on whites)

Temporal dithering is the real culprit for me (and strobe-like PWM slower than ~10khz, but none of these have that level of PWM even on low brightness LOL)

If I wanted a truly "perfect" screen — let's face it, really the only place where you can even possibly be able to get that is in a Windows laptop. There's just not enough options within what Apple makes. But m1air is "good enough"!

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m1air compared to m2/m3air

Thankfully this rules out the PWM "brightness dips" as the reason why I didn't like the m2/m3air, considering the m1air "has the issue too" but is way better on my eyes!

m2air felt really disorienting to use, but m1air doesn't feel like that.

The biggest difference between m2air and m1air then… is that m2air is marketed as "billions of colors", has the rounded corners which probably implies a whole different backlight arrangement, and has that extra color calibration weirdness with uniformity2D "intentionally" adding "blotches and uneven spots".

On the other hand, m1air (and M2 TB) are both marketed as only "millions of colors".

That leads me to believe the reason why I was having more strain with m2air is probably due to some kind of "10-bit emulation" or additional FRC that the m1air doesn't have.

(I remember feeling like I was seeing "RGB rainbow and reddish fringing" around sharp edges on the m2air, but I don't see that really at all on the M1.)

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m1air compared to M2 TB

Two really interesting differences I spotted between m1air and M2 TB:

• On m1air, there is a "scanlines" effect if you look really close at solid colors — each horizontal line alternates between slightly brighter and dimmer. I've also seen this before on the 2018 Intel Retina MBA.

  On the M2 TB, this isn't visible and every pixel looks the same. But this has me wondering — does the TB look "better" here because it is adding some kind of additional flicker or pixel inversion to "hide" these scanlines that the Air doesn't?

• Apple says both the m1air and M2 TB "support (fake) HDR" on the internal display, but there's something very different about the implementation on each. m1air definitely has "less" of it.

  Use a Metal color adjustment on the M2 TB, and it won't apply to GPU-driven apps like Blender or games. The window of those apps will stay bright, and you can notice the rest of the desktop and backlight "all slightly adjusting" (and sometimes causing shifts in banding) whenever the "bright" window appears and disappears. The display is being driven in a way where it applies fake HDR (EDR) more often, implying some additional color management steps are applied on TB Pros.

  However, on the m1air, Metal color adjustments will apply to all app windows, this "bright window" issue does not occur at all. EDR does not activate on any app, including games (and probably will only activate with actual HDR video playback)

  I didn't test it, but I suspect the m2air is more like the Pros. m1air is probably the only Apple Silicon Mac that doesn't have this "enhanced" EDR that applies to the desktop environment.

Rikl Also, FontSmoothingAdjuster helps me too.

Yep, this is a must, even before I knew about temporal dithering etc. I've been disabling font smoothing on Macs for >7 years. The unsmoothed text has always been easier to read for me on any monitor, Retina or not.

(However, on Windows though I swear by default ClearType lol, I actually really like ClearType RGB smoothing)

Rikl Now, I can comfortably use TextEdit and other apps with white backgrounds.

Rikl Also, I use Firefox with DarkReader.

Interesting, I wonder if this relates to the different panel ID in your m1air, or maybe we just have different sensitivities.

Black text on white backgrounds actually looks awesome on my m1air, they have the perfect brightness already

(I just turn the backlight down to 3~7 squares, which is actually helping because I seem to get no symptoms at all from <50% backlight on this laptop!)

In fact, black text on white looks even better on my m1air than it ever did on both M2 TBs I tested, since the text doesn't seem to "glow" much at all!

Given that black on white is what I'm looking at 90% of the time on a computer, the m1air "doing this right" in a very consistent way is what made me finally decide to keep the m1air after all lol

So I actually prefer white pages on my m1air over dark pages

(with generally default color settings, I'm only using a VERY slight, nearly unnoticeable Metal color adjustment because I feel like forcing it into Metal overlay mode makes it feel better TBH)

Rikl I'm nitpicking about the contrast/brightness.

Yeah m1air is 100% the right choice for you then, since M2 TB will just have even deeper black levels and brighter whites (…especially if a M2 TB ends up with one of the strainy "FMX" panels, the glare is SO bad on it).

I hope the m1air's "PWM-like dips in brightness on every frame" isn't an issue for you either, because my m1air is honestly a great and very comfortable panel (with Stillcolor) in all other ways outside of that issue!

Rikl Yep, although m1air still flickers on dark grays when filmed at 240hz no matter what.

BUT… some other totally usable laptops for me do that too, and I'm fine with those, so doesn't seem like a big deal after all!

Probably due to the low flicker depth compared to e.g. OLED PWM. It's never actually "turning off and on", just a slight dip in brightness every frame.

Some are sensitive to that but it seems like the positives of the rest of the display (especially the fact that temporal dithering can still be fully disabled with Stillcolor on the m1air!) outweigh any possible symptoms from the PWM brightness dips for me.

Really the only thing I can notice using the m1air that I'd connect to PWM is slightly dry eyes. But I'll take that over the really weird painful panel in my second M2 TB that was causing extremely watery eyes… (and I don't have the time to try another M2 TB)

Everything else about it aside from that is pretty great and I'd call the m1air usable!

BTW m1air with Stillcolor is SO much better than 2018 Intel Retina MBA

(the 2018 Intel MBA on macOS had terrible dithering that couldn't be disabled, really bad response times and ghosting that felt like everything left a "burning" trail, extreme dry eye symptoms. even Mojave was unusable on the 2018 LOL. it was much more usable on Windows but still had ghosting. but… m1air does not have any of those issues at all!!)

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Yes. I've had far worse Windows laptops than the Stillcolored M1MBA. If I could find a perfect screened Windows laptop(probably does not exist), I would get one and run Linux on it. But still keep the M1MBA. I even got some screen cleaner for the M1MBA.

Returned my second M2 Touch Bar Pro (with the uniform but really uncomfortable panel, panel ID starts with FMX)

M2 TB Pros that have 00000000 in the panel ID are much more comfortable than the FMX ones. If you don't see the zeroes in a M2 TB Pro's panel ID then exchange as you probably got a bad panel. (specific to M2 Touch Bar Pro, not relevant for other laptops)

I am keeping the m1air, good enough for me

Here is my M1 Air's panel ID:

FP1223202CVP3WVBD+5AQK240320A9JA+PROD+Y218621852194+2122321L22322122322B223220+K10720181K11620413+5425A2205KT30T00TTUYYJY5A41424483+S23D688Z79S23D688Z79S23D688Z79S23D688Z

^ pretty uniform colors, awesome antireflective coating, no noticeable backlight bleed, no "glowing" black text(!), slightly washed out reds (this is good!), no heavy color tint but very slightly greenish (which I actually like TBH), every other row of pixels alternates between slightly brighter and darker (which was not true for the TB Pro, but lines up with older Intel Airs, not sure what causes this though. Pixel inversion related? Not sure whether seeing these "scanlines" is a good or bad thing)

m1air has flicker on dark gray on camera — which M2 TB Pro doesn't — but some other laptops I find completely usable have this issue too, so it doesn't seem to affect me! (which is surprising because many other forms of flicker affect me much more)

interesting fact about my m1air:

it's the only Apple Silicon laptop out of every single one I've tried where the Apple logo on bootup looks totally "normal", not too bright, not "glowing", not shimmering, no "halo" around it. it's just flat

it even looks better than how the bootup logo looks on Intel Macs to me

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

waydabber

I have installed the last version of better display 2.3.1 (pro version) but when I execute the command I get failed as return:

Am I doing something wrong? Sorry guys I am really noob with macos

Lauda89 was ok for 3 months then one day started to give me the usual migraine problem but I don't know why!

is Stillcolor still running? it needs to be constantly running in the background for it to work, sometimes it can report the wrong setting because macOS changed dithering back to on or something, so maybe toggle disable dithering twice to see if that resets it back into place

if that doesn't work though, I have no idea why especially as you are still on the same macOS with the same monitor and cable. anything else changed in your workspace recently like new lightbulbs?

also, given that you have an OLED monitor, who knows what it itself could be doing. maybe it has some sort of burn in prevention that adds flicker or changes the way the pixels are driven over time? (i'm only familiar with LCDs and personally wouldn't buy an OLED monitor myself)

also, the overdrive compensation thing won't affect external monitors at all, it is only for the internal display. and it only seems to do something on m1air (after changing it and then toggling sleep mode, I swear that the screen contrast reduces and lower brightness settings feel more properly dim on the internal display)

bpo19 Your symptoms were exactly what I felt when I purchased it last year

seems like you probably ended up with one of the "starts with FMX" panels on your M2 TB Pro too last year, lol

The 00000000 panels on M2 TB Pro are better and don't cause the same symptoms, but yeah m1air (at least my panel) is wayyyyy better in terms of more "relaxing" contrast, colors, and less glare as long as the "dips in brightness on every frame" don't affect you.

so if you're not extremely PWM sensitive, m1air with Stillcolor is probably a better choice

if m1air doesn't work for you however, it's still worth it to try an M2 TB Pro (but only ones with an 00000000 panel)

an example to compare to: I can "tolerate" my OLED iPhone 14 Pro indoors and definitely use it for basic phone tasks and reading articles, but after looking away from it everything kind of feels "washed out" and any "real" work like writing emails or note taking immediately makes me feel dizzy and I don't want to do it on the OLED. however, OLED phones are noticeably more usable for me outdoors in bright sunlight. (for some reason, my current 14 Pro is way better than my previous iPhone 12 which looked blurry, I hated looking at even outdoors, and really seemed to mess with my color vision. my 14 Pro at least actually looks "sharp and colorful" but is still pretty rough on me.)

in addition, watching a PWM TV for about 30 minutes makes my eyes feel very overworked. and PWM lightbulbs cause me really bad symptoms, I start to feel VERY tired being in rooms lit by high flicker depth LEDs for too long.

finally, temporal dithering REALLY messes with me, I've pretty much validated that it's the main source of my reading challenges because my level of comprehension and reading speed IMMEDIATELY goes up SO MUCH on any device I can successfully disable it on. I have many problems even with the more primitive FRC on old CCFL TN monitors.

given I'm not feeling my usual (and typically very obvious) dithering symptoms on the m1air, Stillcolor works!!

however, given all that, it still seems like the weird "60hz very mild flicker depth PWM on dark grays" on the m1air (and on one of my usable Windows laptops too) doesn't really bother me much at all!

I'm having a really good time with my m1air so far, one thing that's awesome about it (with Stillcolor) is that repeating vertical lines of the same text or UI (checkboxes/buttons) seem to appear "perfectly lined up", it looks like all of them are in focus at once instead of "some randomly and inconsistently being in focus to me and others not".

also, black text on white backgrounds looks great and doesn't look like it's glowing much at all! this is one of the most important things for a screen to nail and the m1air does it exceptionally well

I'm actually running the m1air at low backlight (5-6 squares), I actually find adjusting the real backlight much more relaxing than "100% backlight + screen dimmer" surprisingly. Some other laptops I have to run at 100% backlight all the time to be comfortable but not the case for the m1air, "true" low backlight feels good.

one thing to keep in mind when adjusting to the screen is that at first, my eyes were opening really wide "by default" because I was used to needing to do that on "bad screens" to even be able to focus, lol. of course this was making my eyes work more than they actually "needed" to, which I finally realized after a few days of using it.

once I relaxed more and allowed my eyes to only be like, half open, I realized I could still actually focus on text on the m1air perfectly even when my eyes aren't fully open, which I usually can't do at ALL on bad screens! low backlight level is also what helped my eyes get used to this "new way" of focusing on the screen with less effort.

Rikl In BetterDisplay using Metal, when I minimize a window then bring it back, the screen goes bright then applies an overlay over it

this doesn't happen for me on m1air, maybe because I'm on Ventura 13.6.6.

are you using Stage Manager? when Stage Manager is enabled, a totally different animation engine for window transitions is used. if you aren't though, I don't know why lol

the only time it goes it bright is when using certain apps in fullscreen (because the overlay window can't appear over it, I guess) or while using Mission Control/Exposé

in my case I only have like a literal -1% Metal color adjustment for the sole purpose of activating the overlay and not really changing anything, which still seems to improve the screen for me LOL might be placebo but hey, if I feel better, I feel better.

(however, on M2 TB Pro, it went bright in a LOT more places, because that laptop seems to have an "enhanced" implementation of fake HDR/EDR)