Flickering on MacBook Air M4

Watermelon

Thank you.

AshX

Update: I turned off “Dim Brightness when on Battery Power” and the flicker went away. But then after adjusting the brightness again it came back?

Seems to me like this is some sort of PWM. Would love to be proven wrong.

Edit: Here’s the video where I got the flicker to go away: https://streamable.com/i4cjt5

Donux

AshX Brutal. I can not believe Apple can ship this, as this is health and safety hazard. These flickers cause severe sensory fatigue over just few minutes of use. And this is defnitely hardware at this low frequency.

AshX

Donux

Yeah, honestly I would say this is a new problem, but the fact that this was present on my 2019 iMac and 2015 MBP my mom was gifted makes me wonder if this is just how it is. I’ve spent 2 hours tinkering and it’s just frustrating. Not to mention I actually waited a whole week for this computer because the Apple Store can’t properly redeem gift cards (I literally spent 6 hours at an Apple Store and they couldn’t make it work).

What’s frustrating is that I can’t tell whether this is a backlight PWM flicker or if this is dithering. I suspect the former since dither shouldn’t be visible on slow motion 240 fps.

The only question I have for you guys at this point is should I try to exchange this or just return it? I’m not convinced any Apple computer with an attached display will be usable.

It’s also insane that I can use my iPhone 13 on iOS 15 all day with no issues. And that’s a phone with PWM. So the other factor is that the display lottery is real and there’s something at the software level causing problems.

I also would like to also point out just how poorly text is rendered on Sequoia and this screen. My iMac 2019 on Mojave caused severe pain but the text was crisp, with or without font smoothing. What the $@&) is Apple doing? My 2011 13” MacBook Pro looked better than this.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

AshX The only question I have for you guys at this point is should I try to exchange this or just return it? I’m not convinced any Apple computer with an attached display will be usable.

Definitely return, I've never been able to get any Mac to be fully usable for me and I've tried so many of them

AshX

Updated the software in a last ditch effort. No better: https://streamable.com/v15msr

Exchanging tomorrow for another one to see if the screen lottery exists.

mirrormystic

hey, just got my MBA M4 15" today, and my eyes hurt too, still color helped a bit, disabling battery dim helps too… but it still sucks :/

how do you record the video that your sharing and are you sure that this is the specific issue that is causing the problems?

gluck with the switch, lmk, I'm prob gonna return mine too

mirrormystic

https://share.icloud.com/photos/01eLRjeQhXkLOphhy7FG69cAA , here's a slo mo 240 recording from my iphone 16 pro max

AshX

mirrormystic

If you can, change the wallpaper to grey or google a grey background and make it full screen. Then, turn off all the lights in the room you’re in, close the curtains so that it’s pitch black and then record the slow motion video. This way, there will be no other light sources flickering and we will know it’s from the screen itself.

Thanks for doing this. If enough of us with MBA’s can capture this, we may be able to determine how common it is and isolate if this is contributing to the discomfort a lot of us feel with the Air computers.

NewDwarf

AshX this is refresh rate of the graphics card

I faced with this problem and described it

https://ledstrain.org/d/3250-macbook-air-m2-interesting-finding

I noticed it only on MBA. Probably, Apple tries to save more battery with this option.

AshX

NewDwarf

I did see your topic before I purchased my MBA! My confusion stems from you saying this is not visible on 240 fps slow motion - all 3 of my videos (2019 iMac with AMD Radeon Pro 560X, 2015 MBP Intel graphics, and 13” M4 Air) were recorded in slow motion.

So is what I’m seeing the refresh rate? If so, why did people not see this on the 13” M2 MacBook Pro touchbar? Why does this seem more difficult to reproduce on the M1 Air? These are all laptops with a 60Hz refresh rate.

And if it’s the graphics card…it’s odd it’s present on 3 different graphics cards over an entire decade.

I’ll have to check if the flicker is present at those specific brightness intervals you mentioned in your thread (not today as my eyes are shot lol). I of course am hesitant to place the blame on this flicker, but I find it suspect that it is the only commonality across machines I have had issues with, once dithering is disabled.

NewDwarf

AshX There is no such problem with MBP. At least I noticed it only on M based MBA.

It is difficult to speculate without having reliable tools to measure on your side.

AshX

NewDwarf

Wow…so do you think they’re using this energy saving protocol because the Air has no active cooling? And because the Pro’s do, they have no need to use it?

Sounds like it’s a choice between PWM on the MiniLED or whatever this 60Hz flicker is on the Air. Yikes!

Would it be worth trying an external monitor with the Air? Should I exchange it or is this baked in to all the Air displays? Did you ever find a way to stop this flicker from turning on?

I’m determined to get to the bottom of this - even if I have to call in some favors from mutual friends who have connections at Apple. Can you recommend what tools I need to measure?

NewDwarf

AshX I think the main reason is the MBA have to be fit to market promotion as most power efficient device. Apple doesn’t care how it will be achieved.

It is definitely worth to try an external screen.

The most reliable tool to measure is an oscilloscope and photo sensor but you have to have some skills for that.

AshX

NewDwarf

Some info from the subreddit r/PWM_Sensitive for those of you who might be interested.

That's the dark tone flicker. There's no known way of disabling it on the MBA. It occurs on all the M2 and up MBAs. Notice it goes away on pure whites and is most visible on mid greys and darker greys.

It does go away on pure white... it's low frequency flicker to improve the display's rendering of dark tones. This is why it doesn't show up on some PWM tests (they use a white screen).

It's a hardware feature but not the same feature that Stillcolor disables. If it really bothers you and you want a small laptop, the Touchbar M1 and M2 don't have this.

Yes it is some kind of software level PWM. It kind of remains me Windows's Display Power Saving Technology (DPST). On Windows I'll disable "Intel FeatureTestControl" in the regedit but I am not sure about macOS

AshX

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

It definitely seems like this flicker is a feature, not a bug. Did the 13” M2 Pro Touchbar ultimately not work for you? My only other hope would be a Mac Mini and an external display to attempt to remain on MacOS. Of course if this thread on r/Dell is any indication, Stillcolor is a must.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin with PC. Some of the Windows laptops and desktops I’ve seen on display have given me the worst vertigo of any screen.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

AshX Did the 13” M2 Pro Touchbar ultimately not work for you

Yeah it didn't work for me, even without having the gray flicker. It was better than other M1 and later Macs but that's only relative, it was still way too uncomfortable for me to be productive on it

mirrormystic

Do you think the flicker is the only thing causing the eye strain? It's not the dithering and stuff?

Do MBP have the dithering issue or any other eye strain issue?

Here is a gray recording: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0c7mRuYUhWJRpOul9gOh_yZ6g , seems like it's flicking do I have the flicker? what is causing the flicking issue, i have the dim screen battery thing off

AshX

mirrormystic

I think they all contribute, but I turned off dithering with Stillcolor, so in theory that shouldn’t be happening. We still don’t know 100% what this is, but it could be some hardware form of dithering or energy saving backlight PWM. I can’t imagine it’s good for us given how low frequency it apparently is.

Thanks. I’m seeing the same thing on your MBA as mine.

AshX

I set my Fujifilm XT30 to 1/4000 shutter speed (its max) and was able to reveal PWM on my iPhone 13 (which doesn’t bother me) and flickering my on my GE lightbulb and the MBA.

This is a video at max brightness of me recording my XT30: https://streamable.com/2o4x7d

mirrormystic

Ok so from further research it seems like:

1. most displays today have dithering - which kinda sucks, including my big screen, because they are all trying to be 10bit now, but post panels don't support 10bits so they have to dither, maybe MBPs have native 10bit screens, no sure
2. About the flicker it seems like yeah there is one here's another vid https://photos.app.goo.gl/eKS94ggRupqzu1DN7 - notebookcheck says there isn't one, but there clearly is
3. I'm wondering if the flicker might go away if we get a panel from a different supplier

AshX

mirrormystic

Thanks again for another video. Yeah, so it seems like this is present on the MBA’s. I do believe this is probably the root of a lot of discomfort on these machines because it is very similar to flicker I’ve found on bad LED and fluorescent lights. The difference being you don’t stare directly at LED or fluorescent lights!

I would venture if any one of us just took a lampshade off and stared directly at an LED light bulb, we might get uncomfortable, lol!

I wish I had the tools to determine what frequency this is occurring at. Common sense would say this is occurring at a lower frequency and thus is more noticeable and distressing. If we can figure that out maybe we will know we need to avoid devices at that specific frequency.

Dithering is allegedly turned off via Stillcolor. I turned Font Smoothing off which helped text clarity. I turned every other conceivable flicker causing feature - Auto Brightness, True Tone, Reduce Transparency, etc. - off. So as far as I can tell one or more of the following has to be true:

Dithering is not actually being turned off by Stillcolor or BetterDisplay
There is a different form of dithering occurring - this “Grey flicker” that is occurring separately from the GPU dither Stillcolor disables. This could either be at a software or hardware level (to conserve power perhaps from the GPU)
This is actually a PWM backlight flicker which is used to conserve power of the backlight and it just so happens to be more visible on grey

I do believe I was able to get it to disappear after turning off “Dim Display when on battery power” but then it got re-enabled. This makes me very, very mildly hopeful there’s a software control for this flicker.

And no, I don’t think this is a gesture of LCD IPS screens. I’ve tested other computers that do not have this. So it’s not required for the technology, but for some reason Apple is utilizing it - and clearly has been utilizing it for years, even during the Intel era as is proven by two of my Intel Macs having the same flicker.