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

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs just dropping this here as you have really similar symptoms and seem able to detect whatever small thing that happens in your body as well.

Try this: look smoothly and rapidly from one side of the metal case like above the keyboard to the other end and feel your eyes, now do the same from the edge to the edge of the screen in the same tempo, while trying to simply follow the screen without refocusing. Just. Quick horizontal gaze. I swear I can feel some refocus or annoyance happening while passing over. Almost like it gets pulled in. It was really prominent while I experimented, and worked like a 1 sec test to see if some change was better while experimenting. You can compare the feeling to a black screen as well, and see what is needed before it starts to trigger.

Of all the stupid things I found that works to make my eyes understand at what depth the monitor is at turning off the notch also helps.

photon78s contrast is a color tables adjustment. You should try disabling the color tables entirely in the settings. if you still need brighter blacks you can try the display calibrator I wrote about in this thread. do note that while using it that it bases the adjustments off the currently used color profile

Does anyone know if color profiles (icc) are applied before or after OS dithering and other adjustments? Seems almost like many of them are applied after. I tried looking into the specs for creating custom profiles, but it was fairly advanced. However I think it would be possible to create a profile that shows dithering and other issues, for example by having really granular color changes on the gamma curve.

Attaching some random color profiles unpacked if someone wants to see what the format looks like. They can be widely different. Might even be possible to modulate 8-bit with it. There is a color profile on mac called WebSafeColors, but I couldn't make it show for the display, as you probably need to modify it a bit and find a way to pack back to icc.

https://swiftsend.io/d/9bcl3q3qs9

edit: semi relevant
ledoge/novideo_srgb: Calibrate monitors to sRGB or other color spaces on NVIDIA GPUs, based on EDID data or ICC profiles (github.com)
dantmnf/AMDColorTweaks: Calibrate monitors to sRGB or other color spaces on AMD GPUs, based on raw data or ICC profiles (github.com)

async Quick horizontal gaze. I swear I can feel some refocus or annoyance happening while passing over. Almost like it gets pulled in.

Yep this happened to me all the time while using 14" mini-LED MBP. I almost suspect that it's my eyes getting confused by the mini-LED backlight zones behind the display which is [literally] at a different depth.

The thing about mini-LED is that it's totally arbitrary the way the screen is going to display a color at any given point. If it's a large block of gray, it might use pure white on the LCD layer but then "dim" it with darker mini-LED dimming zone levels in the center, but then the very edges of it will be gray on the LCD layer but with much brighter mini-LED zones. Maybe even in some cases it will choose to display a large zone of gray entirely with gray on the LCD layer instead of "dimmed" white! Who knows!

And add to this that each mini-LED zone is using a slightly different PWM level per each zone depending on the zone's unique brightness level, meaning the screen is flickering at different, arbitrary frequencies in every small square area, and also doing (most likely) TCON-level FRC to emulate 10-bit at the same time as all of that.

With this mini-LED tech, "you're supposed to" be able to process these "similar looking" colors that are created in entirely different ways with different mixtures of dimming zone brightness, LCD layer RGB levels, and (literally) slightly different 3D depths as "the same color". That doesn't work for us and it's probably one the reasons why the very edges of things feel so "spiky" and "magnetic" to our eyes on the 14" mini-LED, almost feeling like "barriers" that take so much effort to move my eyes past them.

FYI, even though this happened to me all the time moving my eyes across my 14"…

Even on m2air, it happens SO much less, especially moving my eyes left was much easier.

On m1air, it's even better, and I can move across the screen from side to side with generally minimal effort.

By the way, I sold my 14", so I don't have a mini-LED Mac anymore.

But switching to m1air basically solved so much of this. It's a problem with mini-LED for us IMO.

Remember, this is what's going on behind your mini-LED.

Really the only thing that made my mini-LED marginally usable, even after Stillcolor and uniformity2D, was adding a matte screen protector over it which made it a lot flatter. But that was only enough to make me feel like "hey, at least I can finally make music and edit videos on here now", but not enough for me to actually want to read anything on it, especially anything studying-related is still a big NO on mini-LED for me.

Meanwhile on m1air with Stillcolor I am typing so fast right now lol VERY good experience so far. Night and day compared to mini-LED.

Something m1air does right (that not even Intel Macs or the M2 TB Pro do for me!) is that focusing on the m1air literally does NOT have that weird "bounce" right after I focus my eyes.

Like my eyes don't focus a "second time" like they do on mini-LED/OLED and bad LCDs too. On m1air, the focus just seamlessly completes and that's it, even if I'm super close up to the screen.

That was actually what made me choose m1air in the end instead of M2 TB Pro, despite the m1air's PWM. Very few screens have such a seamless ability to focus to me "without any weird things happening in the few seconds after I focus". Even e-ink still kinda has that problem for me! But the m1air doesn't

Final verdict: VERY satisfied with m1air. Good enough for me to keep it. Recommended to try.

Stillcolor is installed.

I also enabled a VERY slight Metal color adjustments gain layer (just for the sake of activating the layer, not to actually change colors) and change overdriveCompCutoff to 0 through BetterDisplayCLI after each reboot — not sure if these last two actually change anything, but IMO it seems to improve it further. If it works, it works.

Feels generally like a good Intel, nothing feels too saturated or too bright. Amazing antireflective coating, contrast level and black point is mild in a good way, nothing ever looks "too contrasty", turning down hardware backlight actually makes the screen look dimmer instead of the "somehow both 'still too bright' and darker at the same time feeling" that I would get from bad screens.

m1air is the only Apple Silicon laptop out of all of them where colors truly feel "relaxing like Intel" and "not too vivid" to me. (Even M2 TB Pro has the "oversaturated feel", but m1air does not.)

When focusing the screen, the "extra 'bouncing' re-focus I get immediately after focusing on bad screens" doesn't happen here at ALL. Essentially every refocus so far has been just a single seamless move, nothing weird happens afterward. The m1air (or at least my m1air's panel) is worth it even just for this benefit alone.

There's only a few other usable screens I know that easily and "seamlessly" focus for me like this (iPhone 4 iOS 7.1.2, 2013 Nexus 7 Android 6, iPhone 7 iOS 15.7.1) which is a VERY good sign. Even some other usable screens (like iPhone 5 on iOS 6.1.3) and even E-ink! still have the "focus bouncing back and forth after I try to focus" issue for me — but m1air does NOT!!

Main thing I had to get used to is realizing that I could finally relax my eyes so much more, because the screen still focuses properly even if my eyes are half closed. Bad screens can't even focus in that state for me! Once I started letting my eyes relax (yet still able to focus), strain decreased by a significant amount.

Also, I had to learn that on m1air, I no longer have to refocus my eyes anymore after I pinch-to-zoom into something. On bad screens zooming in feels like it totally changes the plane of focus, but on here I can keep my gaze "entirely frozen" while zooming and the zoomed-in text/image will already be clear with no effort.

There are also things m1air does noticeably better than Intel, like black text on white backgrounds which has veryyyyy little glow and reading feels very smooth to my eyes while scanning across from left to right. Vertically repeating UI elements and text on m1air also feel very "lined up" and even (instead of "off-balance").

Despite that it's still a glossy screen, there is very little glare. Totally different compared to m2/m3air and the Touch Bar Pros which are extremely reflective in comparison (and especially the case when you get a bad panel on those). On m1air, I pretty much do not notice the reflection of my face on the screen during use.

The m1air's slight "PWM brightness dips" on every frame doesn't seem to bother me at all. This is probably because this "PWM" has very low flicker depth, it is NOT "strobe-like"!

Only possible symptoms are like very slight tension and dryness in eyes. And I mean REALLY slight. The "level of strain" never seems to go above "gentle enough to be easy to ignore" while using this laptop, even after using it for hours. Surprisingly similar feeling and "strain levels" between using m1air and using my perfectly usable 2012 Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13.

(In contrast to the bad "FMX" panel M2 TB Pro, which kept getting worse and worse in strain the longer I used it. That M2 TB panel felt like it was "forcefully pulling my eyes open" no matter what I did…)

I do NOT get any nausea or "seasickness" while (and after) using m1air at all!

I may still prefer my 2012 Lenovo laptop's "non-retina" 1600x900 IPS in a few cases but these two are VERY close in comfort for most use cases including reading, note-taking, and studying. It's really incredible getting such a good experience out of a totally modern device.

Also, one problem that I had mistakenly suspected was "coming from the screen" was actually an ergonomic issue — sometimes I'd get tired or really tense while typing. This was actually only coming from how low the keyboard is since the laptop is so thin.

Then I bought and put on a clear hard shell case (which raises up the keyboard quite a bit, and my case also seems to "counteract" the wedge shape making the keyboard angled more flat), and now the keyboard feels PERFECT and I don't feel tense while typing any longer! The thickness and weight added by the hard shell case make it feel comfortable to type in MANY more locations and postures. IMO putting on a shell is essential for typing comfort!

I am on Ventura 13.6.6 with 1280x800 @2x Retina resolution and Color LCD profile!

Refurbished M1 Air (Silver, 16GB, 2TB, 8CPU, 8GPU)

Panel ID (ioreg -lw0 | grep -e "panel-serial-number" -e coverglass):

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

Donux m1air was definitely NOT good before Stillcolor. When you tried it a few months ago, Stillcolor hadn't been released yet. Stillcolor is what has finally made it good

Rikl It doesn't seem to make much difference.

Funnily enough, I actually turned off Metal adjustments on my m1air recently as I was starting to see a little bit of flicker/static (with my own eyes) on gray colors when in a pitch black room. Quitting BetterDisplay / turning off the color adjustment seemed to stop this or noticeably reduce it… I think?

It was veryyyyy slight though so not sure if I was actually seeing anything coming from the screen itself, or if I was just noticing the PWM for some reason, or just the non-screen-related static I usually see in dark rooms? But I feel pretty good without the adjustments at all though, possibly better?

The Metal adjustments seemed to help on M2 TB Pro, but not sure if they are useful at all on m1air.

Rikl I bet there was a panel lottery with the Nexus 7 too, LOL. I actually have used two different 2013 Nexus 7 tablets in the past year… the screen and colors definitely felt different on each.

(Also, if yours has a screen protector on it, that can negatively affect screen comfort.)

I also noticed that for some really weird reason, the Nexus 7 is MUCH more comfortable in portrait mode than in landscape mode. Polarization related?

By the way, it's actually awesome to hear that the m1air is more comfortable than even an old tablet for you!

bpo19 Use BetterDisplay Image Adjustments. Install FontSmoothingAdjuster to turn off font smoothing.

Use 1280x800 retina.

bpo19 still not sure if this terminal command does anything but i do it after every reboot and it weirdly seems to help things, like it somehow makes the screen feel lower contrast

/Applications/BetterDisplay.app/Contents/MacOS/BetterDisplay set -namelike=built -framebufferNumericProperty=0x0 -specifier=overdriveCompCutoff

of course you need latest betterdisplay installed to run this. after running enter sleep mode then after it fully goes to sleep wake it back up (in order to re-initialize display output)

also, i am still using default Color LCD profile, not sRGB. sRGB profile oversaturates things too much

make sure stillcolor is running constantly, set to launch at login, and has a checkmark next to disable dithering in the menu bar. (it will not work if you quit the app or it's not running in the background)

i also checked "disable uniformity" in stillcolor but not sure if that actually does anything on m1air

in addition to turning true tone off, also turn auto brightness off

i was having strain at max backlight but it's actually way better for me to run this laptop at low backlight

often times you see opposite advice here like ""use 100% with a screen dimmer helps (because that avoids PWM)"" and yeah, usually that helps me on other devices — but IMO that's NOT true with this Air!

i actually still use the real hardware backlight, feels more comfortable to me than virtual screen dimming. i just turn hardware backlight all the way down to around 5-6 squares and that's what feels much more comfortable to me

also, turn off font smoothing, as Rikl said (i've done this on macOS since even before i knew i had screen sensitivity LOL, it's always the first thing i change on every Mac)

i'm also on Ventura 13.6.6 if that matters. my laptop came with 13.0 and i upgraded it to 13.6.6. (i'm not on Sonoma)

turn keyboard backlight off!

if you're still having strain after all of that, then maybe your m1air has a different panel from mine

does it feel like your m1air has tons of glare or "doesn't feel dim enough" at low backlight?

then it's probably different from mine, because my m1air has a really good antireflective coating where even though it's still glossy, it actually feels like it doesn't have that much glare at all compared to other MacBooks i've used — and dimming mine feels like it reduces contrast in a really relaxing way

what's your panel ID? run this to get it

ioreg -lw0 | grep -e "panel-"

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