pushupsandcode

lougro I too had nausea when scrolling or reading on macOS, but in my case I've had stomach issues forever. The eye strain only started happening this year.

My husband who seems to have a perfect gut microbiome has no problems with Apple products and eyestrain, whereas my eyes can't handle them even for 5 minutes.

I know it's just anecdotal observations, but it makes me think that there is correlation between the gut and our eyes, but it's also a bit unclear as whether gut dysbiosis is the cause or the result from exposure on these technologies.

degen this was my experience as well on both an M1 Macbook Pro with Asahi, and a 16in 2019 Macbook Pro with Ubuntu 22.04.

In my case (as I've posted before) it's macOS' font rendering. Blurry fonts, lack of hinting, different anti-aliasing technique.

I've sold my 2019 MBP for €1700 and replaced it with a €330 (used) Thinkpad E15 Gen 2 that runs Ubuntu beautifully -- no more eye strain.

Interesting. I too have stomach acid issues and other problems, half of them came up (or gotten worse) with long Covid. I've been seeing all sorts of doctors lately, best I got so far in terms of diagnosis was IBS-C, a sudden development of asthma, and bronchial inflammation.

None of them doctors want to hear a word about long Covid, and most of them only charge me money just to say "tests came up normal, therefore there's nothing wrong with you, therefore there's nothing to treat".

I'll keep trying with gastroenterologists etc and see if I get anywhere.

Have you noticed your eye strain getting worse or better with diet changes? When I had the Macbook Pro, I noticed the burning in my eyes was getting worse with high histamine foods. But now I'm back to eating high histamine foods and my eyes are perfectly okay with PWM-free screen on a Thinkpad E15.

Deepdeep thank you!

Maxx no worries. It would just help to know from which gen of the Intel iGPU the problem starts and whether you have different native resolution from your FHD's X280 display as the rendering is different in a 4K native resolution vs FHD (even in external monitors).

Obviously everyone is different, but I found relief in a Thinkpad E15 with 11th gen i5 CPU with FHD screen. I'm just curious for myself if either newer generations of the iGPU or a 4K display would bring my eye strain back.

Moe3224 You won't believe what's happening with me, I use windows laptop for work that is connected to two external monitors and I use an iPad Pro 11" all day too with no issues. When I connect my MBA m1 to my monitors after 30mins my eyes get really red and itchy, I can't focus on the screen when looking at text.

I wouldn't discount font rendering by macOS, which is different than Windows and Linux. This was my issue and had the same symptoms you're having. Even though most may not notice it, the fonts are really blurry, and rendered in a way that makes the eyes struggle to focus on text.

The anti-glare coating of the screen blurs the fonts even further, but the font rendering could explain why people are still having problems when using external monitors as well.

MAS-76 For now I've had to give up and revert back to my 2015 MBP which of course isn't a great solution.

Along with the font rendering, the difference in your 2015 MBP and the newer models is the resolution and amount of nits (brightness) of the screen.

I too had issues with the 2019 MBP and M1 MBP, then I switched to a Thinkpad that has around the same resolution and nits as your 2015 MBP, (as well as running operating systems that do not share Apple's techniques for font rendering) and I'm ok now.

I believe the higher the resolutions, the worse the problem becomes with Apple's font rendering, as if you leave it at native, the text is hard to read, but if you scale it, then you increase the blur. The font rendering also got worse with newer macOS updates.

As for the difference in nits, I notice the problem for me gets worse in light mode, hence I had to keep it at dark mode at all times. Keeping the brightness to full on a 300-nit screen is much better for my eyes than any level of brightness set on a 500+ nit screen.

Of course, I'm just speculating with all the above based on my experience, so don't take my word for it.

ryans yes 22.04 with GNOME.

I think that's it for me, I've found my "good" setup.

• Linux Ubuntu (dual boot with Windows 11, also fine) on a matte, non-PWM, 15in IPS screen at 1920 x 1280 (Thinkpad E15 Gen2, 11-gen i5 graphics, no dedicated GPU).
• Using full brightness and dark mode (I don't seem to need the built-in blue light filter).
• Using Gnome Tweaks to change the Hinting from "Slight" to "Full", and keeping the anti-aliasing to "subpixel".
• Using Firefox and Chrome with the extension "Dark Reader". The options that are enabled on this add-on are Dark in Dynamic mode, Brightness set to +50, custom font enabled to "system-ui" so it picks up the Hinting as well as the font.

Now I just need to keep reminding my husband and son to stop asking me to see something on their Macbooks and iPhones. I swear it only takes 5 minutes for my eyes to start burning, yet I've been studying on this ThinkPad now for at least 6-8 hours a day without issues.

Another plus for me is this Thinkpad was only €330, and hoping to sell the Macbook Pro for a lot more, so getting to save some money in the end too.

Most of you already know that even if you have the perfect setup (hardware / operating system etc), web browsers and websites may sometimes still make your eye strain persist. In my case, the biggest issue for my eyes is due to font rendering, which some web browsers insist on doing their own thing.

A workaround for me is once I got a good setup (currently in Ubuntu on a Thinkpad E15 G2, using Tweaks to increase Hinting, change the interface font etc), I installed the Dark Reader browser add-on, in the More tab enable the font and chose (or type) "system-ui". Visually, this looks as if along with changing the font on the websites, it also changes how it's rendered.

This works on both Firefox and Chrome (although it looks better in Firefox) and has improved readability of websites for me, especially those with weird/non-standard fonts. My eyes also find comfort using the dark mode of this extension, but even the Light Mode on Dynamic setting is a lot more relaxing to my eyes than the usual white background. Another option you can tweak on this extension is the Text Stroke, for those who get eye strain with fonts that are too thin.

Obviously, this may not work for everyone, and I haven't tested this on Windows yet, but it would be interesting to know if others find the same relief. You can also change the gfx.font_rendering.ahem_antialias_none (or similar) value in about:config in Firefox to see if that helps you in any way.

Have you found any other workarounds for web browsers that works for you?

Deepdeep I think the fact that there are multiple variables at play with our eye strain and headaches is what makes it so difficult to understand what's wrong, and thus takes a while to figure out a solution (or a workaround).

Font rendering techniques have evolved over the years. There was also a limitation and standardization in fonts used by websites. Now, you may notice that even different web browsers contribute to our eye strain, some more than others (Firefox is worse for me than Chrome for instance, and for some people, it helps when they disable hardware acceleration on their browsers).

Thank you! A matte, PWM-free screen at a lower resolution seems to be what I needed. I never even realized how annoying reflections were until I got this cheap but very impressive used ThinkPad; now it feels like I'm reading on paper. And I never thought I'd say this, but I feel much better and more productive with this €300 Thinkpad than with the €3000 Macbook. It's crazy.

Deepdeep That's great, I'm glad you found something that works for you. It matches my experience with font smoothing / rendering as well. On older operating systems this was a non-issue. I don't know why they had to change this.

Sunspark Unfortunately, having Ubuntu on my Macbook was short-lived, even though it looked gorgeous and relaxing on the Retina screen. It was overheating to the point that it was crashing every few minutes.

But just before that I've managed to install Tweaks and see that Hinting was enabled at slight (it looked better at full), and AA was at subpixel. The AMD was recognized and working, but I don't know if that was the one rendering. Anyways, I've already reset it and put it for sale, and not willing to have another 3 day migraine. I got a used Thinkpad E15 Gen 2 for €330 (arrived this morning), been testing Ubuntu all day, so far no eye strain, no headaches and works great. I will keep testing.

Deepdeep yes I was impressed at the number of options. The adjustment of brightness felt more relaxing, but my eyes still felt like they were going out of focus every 2 seconds, especially when dealing with text.

Deepdeep yes I have.

mike thank you, I'll try it.

mike no I haven't. Which one should be covered? My left eye has more blurry vision than the right. And how long should I keep it covered? A week? A few months?

Deepdeep thank you. I've already tried this about 2 weeks ago and the fonts were more blurry on non-HiDPI options. I might still have the app installed, I'll give it a go again with different resolutions.