Anyone with a Macbook Air or Mac Mini tried Stillcolor and had it NOT work?

caboy

The other thread seems to have a lot of posts. And mixed information. The consensus seems to be that Stillcolor does not do anything for laptops with OLED screens (Macbook Pro) as those have PWM flicker, which is an artifact of the display itsself. And may have mixed results with Macbook Airs?

If you have a Macbook AIR or MINI, what is your experience; did it work or do you still have eye strain? Please post which model and gen hardware (m1/m2/m3) you have.

Donux

caboy I have tested it with macbook air M2 13 inch and can say it has no noticeable effects. Eye strain kicks in once nervous system starts to react to strain caused to the eyes. At this point, there is not point adjusting anything, only solution is to move away from the machine. It goes in line with what other people reported, i.e. approx. 2 hours of use is tolerable. Then when it comes to gradient tests, I did not see them change at all after changing settings (firefox, or chrome). Only thing that is happening - noise artefacts slightly change once disable dithering is activated. But gradient banding - does not change at all. But, thumbs up for people who put that big effort, really appreciate.

Applesexual

caboy MBP uses miniLED, not OLED.

For me, still color works on the m3 MacBook Air. It’s possible that dithering isn’t your issue.

At this point, I’m thinking about moving away from Apple products for good. I don’t want to have to rely on 3rd party software that may not be supported in the future.

Vip

caboy I installed it on my M2 Air and my 13" M1 Pro and it hasn't helped me use the native screens. I can just about (barely) see a very slight difference in gradient banding with it enabled but I still get symptoms of sustained headache, eye strain and nausea after a few minutes of use.

I guess my problem is not dithering or PWM-related then - who knows what's behind it? I have found no screen made in the last 8 years or so that doesn't give me these symptoms. I can only work using an old external monitor, which is absolutely fine regardless of input source.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

the ones i know it has significant effects on are the m1 air to a good degree, makes it a lot more usable in many conditions (but not as usable as my 2012 windows laptop)

and it also works (possibly better) on m2 13" touch bar macbook pro but only ones with "000000" in the Panel ID

on the other hand i tested two M2 airs with entirely different panels (different color tint between them etc) and stillcolor did not help me there, it didn't reduce strain at all on either M2 air

also, it didn't work on a second m2 13" touch bar mbp I tried that started with "FMX" in the Panel ID and had no long string of zeroes

a few others in this thread also actually had the same experience as me comparing 000000 and FMX M2 touch bar pros so there's definitely something different about those panels

and of course it doesn't work on mini-LED macbook pros at all. the reason is not related to PWM, it's more related to the fact that it's suspected the mini-LED MBPs use additional dithering done in the TCON in addition to the DCP/GPU

Rikl

What DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs said about the M1 Air. If you tend to do macos updates, keep a Time Machine backup around in case they disallow Stillcolor.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Rikl something interesting I realized about my M1 Air…

After recently experimenting with installing Asahi Linux KDE — despite my refurbished M1 Air "arriving" with 13.0 Ventura and then upgraded to 13.6.6, the Asahi Linux installer actually reported my main macOS Ventura partition's "firmware version" as 14.4.1 Sonoma despite never installing it myself. The laptop probably had Sonoma at some point before it was refurbished 👀

Fortunately, on ARM Macs, this firmware version can be downgraded through a full "DFU mode" restore to an older macOS IPSW. This is different from the usual wipe and reinstall from USB, etc. that keeps the newer firmware version even when installing an older OS version.

Given that some people here have mentioned that "their M1 Air was better on Ventura and worse on Sonoma", I'm probably going to try doing a full downgrade to Ventura firmware at some point to see if that changes anything.

BTW, the way Asahi Linux looks on the M1 Air is worth noting since although I can tell that temporal dithering flicker is still there (as Stillcolor can't be used from Linux), there's actually many things I like more about Linux display output aside from that. Despite noticing "some" dithering problems like twitching edges of text… aside from that, colors seem more relaxing on Linux, less "glowy" effect to everything, very information dense UI looks nicer. According to KDE display settings it looks like no color calibration profile is used at all on Linux which is really interesting.

If it ever becomes possible in the future to send enableDither=false to the DCP from Linux, which I don't think there's any method for this yet, I feel like somehow combining them could achieve the best possible M1 Air display quality

GBowler

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Sorry for going off topic but I have two 2019 MBP which are identical spec and os, one gives me strain, one doesn't… the one that gives me strain is on later firmware.

Would DFU mode downgrade the firmware? and is there any risk to my comfortable machine?

Rikl

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Did you try the latest Fedora Asahi Remix 40? I have not. But l had the same experience as you with past releases. I keep hoping that they will make the display more friendly. With the amazing work they did reengineering the display driver, it might be trivial for them to prevent dithering.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

GBowler Not possible on Intel, DFU only exists on Apple Silicon

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Rikl Yep I tried the latest Fedora Asahi 40 with Plasma 6

pavvell

It does not work for M3 Air 🙁

caboy

Looking at the other thread, it looks like there have been some updates to "Stillcolor". Has anyone tried it and found it works or does not work?

martin_86

I have 14'' macbook pro m3. I tried and I think its slightly worse for me. I've read and seen some others think its great. I think its worth a try, takes only a few seconds to download.

thorpee

I can use it ok on an older cinema display (USB-c to mini displayport) connected to M1 air on Ventura 13.6.6 (22G630).

There was a tiny bit of strain that I can deal with. I think its more just somethings being fuzzy. Took a day to get use to it.

Oh and also I can't have any of my LED downlights on as i get massive strain (Must confuse the eye). Strangely I'm fine with them on and my Samsung TV playing, but not looking at the mac. So make sure to turn off any other light sources and just have a little daylight coming in the window. See if that helps.

Tuck

Didn't work for me on the pro nor the air unfortunately