Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
15” MBA — any reports on PWM, dithering, and eye or brain sensitivity?
- Thread starter Saturn007
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have M1. I saw another thread, and there is a guy who said that it’s not a M2Pro cpu that help but FLux app for him. Im convinced that macos and apple
silicon has some strange scaling or gpu rendering that is really bad for vision. Never had problems with windows.
Last edited:
Sad that there is no comparable windows alternative for macbook air m2 energy efficiency.
Never thought about scaling being a factor, but who knows. I'm using 2x retina scaling on my MBA15 (not the default setting). So far so good. In fact the display looks awesome to me.
For reference, I had to sell my MBP16 M1p because of sore eyes and nausea.
And you are ok with MBA15 now? Cause MBP14 really ruined my experience, if I use it for 15 mins, I get cloudy head and headache for next 2 days.
Its only useable with external monitor and betterdummy app.
Yes, I would say the MBA15 display is great during the day and ok at night (in dark environments). It's not the most comfortable screen to use in the dark (that prize goes to the MBP13 2015) but it's much better than the MiniLED MBP, which was unusable for me in the dark for more than 10 min.
Been using many M series macbooks over the past few years. I've only ever had problems when plugging into an external monitor for some reason. Using the laptop on its own has always been fine for me on two different M1 Macbook Airs, 2 different M2 15 inch airs, 16 inch pro. Would get dizzy within 5 mins and nauseous for at least 8 hours plugging into a Dell U3219 monitor. Luckily I found that "mirroring" using the program BetterDisplay makes it go away for some reason.
Yep, there's a couple of ways. Here's how the lab professionals do it. They put a light sensor with a very fast detection speed and stick it right on to the screen.
But for a diy at home test, just do the following. Go into a totally dark room, set the screen brightness to lowest, and then physically move the screen around quickly in your field of view. If it has pwm you'll see a bunch of individual screen-shaped flashes move through the air. The faster and further you move the screen, then the more obviously spaced apart the screen flashes will become.
Last edited:
This is actually really interesting. That ringing would drive me nuts! I have a M1 Max 16 inch model, and I see none of it at all, even with the macro lens on the iPhone 14PM.
I'm curious if there's any of the "red/pink screen" look to it, or yellow as some report. The screen is better than the original MBAs but I'm not sure if the update gets rid of that or if you only get such a perfect monitor out of the pro lineup.
Which Windows machines do you two use? I would MUCH rather use MacOS but I've returned 5 different Air's and Mini's (and the monitors I tried to use with the Mini's) so I may just have to hold my nose and move on... sadly.
I am laptop-less at home. For work, it’s a Dell Latitude 7000 series. I tried a Vaio SX12 and X1 Nano but I didn’t like the overall experience, especially trackpad, and returned them.
Sorry to hear about your issues with the iPads!
I'm currently going through that, have tried several that all bothered me- not with headaches, but with dry/burning eyes when using them. Even the ones that have no PWM.
I suspected it was temporal dithering, so I ended up buying the 9th gen iPad, which has no PWM and has a sRGB display- no P3- and as such, seemingly has no temporal dithering.
It was fine for the most part for the first month or two, but lately I have noticed more of that dry/burning feeling in the eyes when using it. Not sure how, with no temporal dithering or PWM- what is up with Apple's displays?
Back to Macbooks- I had similar trouble with the M2 MacBook Air, so I returned it. I really liked it, wished I could have kept it- maybe I could have adjusted and gotten comfortable with it, it wasn't too bad- but I didn't want to take the risk of having it bother me and being stuck with a $1,000 device.
Ipad 10 does not utilize the P3 color space- that's how Apple keeps it on the lower end price-wise.... and Notebookcheck claims there is no temporal dithering on that one (even though there is on the Air 5, Pro 11", etc). But with that being said, the 10th gen gave me dry, burning eyes within minutes of using it- I had to return it within the first week.
I am using a 9th gen now and it seems better- but sometimes I still get dry/slightly burning eyes, which is odd as sometimes I can use the iPad with no issues, and other times it makes me feel that way.
Honestly, pretty sure that the notebookcheck report is just incorrect at this point, since apple devices have used temporal dithering for a really long time.
I have a 2015 15" MBP that aggressively dithers in both Intel and AMD graphics modes, and it has an sRGB display that only supports 8 bit color depth. Applying the Intel nvram set boot-args="dither=0" fix in recovery mode actually causes a noticeable difference on this machine in macOS Monterey, suddenly when adjusting display gamma or color profile in integrated graphics mode, you start seeing color banding shifts (indicating dither disabled), compared to before the fix where everything looks "smooth" no matter what the display settings are.
A lot of people seem to be wondering why it still feels like dithering is being used even on devices with native 8-bit sRGB, no P3 etc. — as a designer I can weigh in on this and say that this is 99% likely because of ColorSync / color management. The level of intricate effect that ColorSync has on display output is something mostly unique to Apple devices for a really long time... it's actually only in 2022 where Windows 11 started integrating something similar called Advanced Color (that will probably be switched on by default in the future...😖)
There's basically a bunch of post processing layers between a program displaying a color and the color that actually shows up on your screen, and ColorSync means that even if an application attempts to show each possible R+G+B color in a row, it won't actually be able to reach all of these colors once it goes through OS color management — because it's basically never the case that e.g. rgb(127,127,127) actually results in the exact same "127 127 127" being sent for that pixel to the monitor. This is true even on seemingly "native" profiles like sRGB, Color LCD, or Generic RGB Profile, because they apply a gamma ramp that has a curve to it instead of representing a direct linear map from 0 to 255.
Now think about what happens when adjusting the gamma and white point sliders in the macOS display calibrator. If there are only 255 values per color, adjusting the gamma would be forcing those 255 physical shades into some smaller set that seemingly would have to still be whole numbers. So there would have to be some sort of "rounding" or loss in precision that you would notice on the display between each color profile — like color banding appearing at different locations, right?
But that doesn't happen, and e.g. a smooth grayscale gradient remains "smooth", no matter if using 8-bit, 10-bit, internal or external monitor, etc. This is because ColorSync — which is a fundamental part of the macOS window server which every window is forced through, with essentially no way to disable — basically is causing temporal dithering to be activated at all times. This is the reason why text (which relies on all shades of gray because of antialiasing) looks awful and shimmery on macOS for everyone who notices this, not the actual font smoothing algorithm itself or DPI scaling. Of course all of this was inherited into other Apple operating systems like iOS and iPadOS as well, since they use the same color management system.
This is in stark contrast to Windows, which has had mostly none or very primitive color management forever (only changing with Windows 11 in late 2022 as previously mentioned). Windows graphics drivers can still cause temporal dithering, but the OS window manager itself mostly works with pure "native" colors, so the problem is fairly easier to get around on Windows 11 (when Advanced Color is off) and Windows 10 and prior by choosing the right graphics card and monitor.
Actually, because a ColorSync-like system has recently been integrated into Windows 11, Microsoft's own article on their Advanced Color Management system accidentally ends up hinting at the same temporal dithering issue that macOS has:
>> When ACM is enabled, the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) performs its composition using IEEE half-precision floating point (FP16), eliminating any bottlenecks, and allowing the full precision of the display to be used. With ACM, apps can access billions of colors with 10-16 bits of precision, and even on displays that only support 8-bit precision, ACM unlocks additional quality using techniques such as dithering.
There are use cases where color management and temporal dithering is useful, mostly in photo and video work. I've heard a lot of people in that space having the opposite issue — not being able to use Windows for their work because the lack of color management makes colors look "inaccurate" or banding artifacts appear after they try to "calibrate" their display, warping the processing of RGB values into something very different and not easily rounded in a smooth way into what is accepted by the actual 8-bit or 10-bit values that monitor hardware requires in the end.
And of course, photo and video is the line of work that the Mac business makes the most money from, with Apple's most expensive machines being marketed towards that sector.
But Macs have always been famous with writers, developers, and students too — where text is important, not images. And us people get the short end of the stick, with every word (regardless of app or text rendering method) passing through way too many layers of ColorSync post-processing and becoming a dithered and shimmery mess, where the entire screen feels like it's moving in the corner of your eye even when displaying a seemingly static page, causing your eyes to constantly refocus or jump to random things unrelated to the text you're trying to read, like the blinking cursor or some brightly colored icon.
And the fact that all of this tech was brought into iPhones and iPads meant for general purpose use, with not one clear accessiblity setting to control the amount of color post-processing used is what makes this unacceptable to me at this point.
It's making me seriously question being a Mac and iPhone user, despite vastly preferring the core Mac workflow over Windows and my work (web design and development) basically relying on a Mac environment.
On macOS, the only way around dithering by messing with system parameters like the boot-args to tell ColorSync not to apply the dithering step, or by running the window server with no graphics acceleration, like in Safe Mode on Intel machines. But that boot parameter only worked for integrated graphics on my 2015 Macs, but changed nothing at all on my newer 2018 MacBook Air, despite the Air also only claiming to support 8-bit sRGB, not supporting True Tone — and heck, even still running Mojave. Based on an old blog post about OS X temporal dithering from 2010, it has been a core part of macOS in some way since at least 10.6 Snow Leopard, and possibly since 10.3 Panther when ColorSync expanded to becoming a part of the monitor output chain for the first time.
So any Intel Mac after that is also probably not able to be fixed either aside from switching to Windows through Boot Camp and using older Intel graphics drivers. M1+ machines are basically a lost cause.
This reply is getting way too long to elaborate, but I'm pretty sure the XDR MBPs, Pro Display XDR, and Studio Display even apply ColorSync and hence dithering even deeper at the display level, based on a comment I read from someone in the Linux on Apple Silicon space and the OS trying to force you into using limited "hardware reference modes" on those devices instead of ICC color profiles.
This is basically the shortest possible way to explain why this seems to be a persistent issue with specifically Apple products — and getting worse every year — when it's always felt way easier to find Windows or Android devices where this is not an issue at all, text looks COMPLETELY fine, and my eyes don't feel any strain.
TLDR:
Apple ColorSync display color management almost always forces color shades into values that aren't whole numbers and more precise than what screens can physically show.
Instead of rounding values and causing color artifacts, temporal dithering is used at almost all times to keep colors "smooth". (This can even affect white if the white point is not native, like in Night Shift mode)
This is why Apple products affect screens where dithering usually wouldn't even need to be used, like 8-bit sRGB or even native 10-bit panels.
People working in photo and video can benefit from this, but people working with text get a massively degraded experience because of this — especially if their eyes are sensitive enough to constantly notice the shimmering text effect over and over when trying to read on Apple devices, like I do.
———
@jm31828 If you've made it this far, I've found a combination of accessibility settings that has actually improved my experience massively with newer LCD iPhones and iPads, which I've never seen anyone mention before. I'm calling it "Double Invert":
Enable Classic Invert in Display accessibility settings. Then enable Zoom, use the three figure gesture to zoom out all the way. Then enable the "Inverted" Zoom filter.
Since there are two inverts happening at once, the screen is now no longer inverted, but something will start to feel VERY different. Some colors will appear slightly off, and if this works for you, static pages will suddenly feel completely still.
I have NO idea what this combination of settings is doing under the hood, but I've tested it on:
- iPad 6 (iOS 15, sRGB, auto brightness off, night shift off)
- iPad Pro 2018 (iOS 17.2, P3, 120hz, auto brightness off, true tone off, night shift ON)
- iPhone SE 2 (iOS 17.2, P3, auto brightness ON, true tone ON, night shift off)
On all three devices, the screen became 10x easier to read. Prior to this, I hated using my iPad Pro 2018 for years, but I actually like using it again after applying double invert.
In fact, this entire reply was written on my SE 2020 with the double invert settings applied — my eyes feel surprisingly just as great as they did before using the phone, so I guess that's the proof that this method actually does work for me — and the way colors are processed actually does have an effect on the eyes of some people.
On sRGB devices double invert makes colors look oversaturated, on P3 devices it makes reds way too washed out. But text looks SO MUCH better — I honestly don't know why.
I actually tested double invert on an OLED iPhone too, and it even caused a very noticeable and sudden difference there too. Of course, PWM is also an issue there too and this method can't be used at the same time as the "reduce white point" strategy for reducing PWM, so I ended up not using this method there since OLED backlight flicker bothers me even more.
But the OLED screen actually felt SO STILL with it on, and I noticed all HDR content (like the "brighter than white" screenshot flash) and P3 colors were entirely disabled and clipped off. So whatever this is doing, it's definitely disabling some layer of color post-processing.
(I'd say the effect of double invert on OLED devices feels like the screen is transformed into an older era of OLED, such as e.g. the Galaxy S5, where PWM was still just as much of an issue but the actual contents on the screen is a lot more "stable" compared to modern devices.
For people who know they aren't affected by PWM but still have issues with new iPhones, it honestly might be worth trying double invert on OLED devices too. In my case though, I just left the OLED iPhone on default settings in the end, and I'd say the optimal use case for double invert is on LCD devices.)
As mentioned, double invert works on the latest version of iOS as of January 2024 which is amazing. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent setting on Mac.
I am closing with:
Journalists should stop reviewing monitors and phone displays as if they are TVs. In so many use cases, text matters, not HDR, how "realistic" a movie looks, contrast ratio, display gamut, or even color accuracy, if you think about areas like general office work or programming where how images look doesn't matter.
If a screen is displaying still text or graphics, the screen should not be acting as if something is still moving, even if "the typical person isn't likely to perceive this". Unfortunately, this isn't the case with most displays or operating systems today, and guess what — no human is going to be 100% typical.
For now, I'm sticking with displays that can actually just succeed in displaying words correctly.
🌀🐚
Last edited:
Thank you so much for the detailed response!
I will definitely give this a try on my iPad 9th gen to see if it is easier on my eyes here in this last week or so before my window closes for being able to return the device.
This is all fascinating, and I had no idea that the non-P3 devices would still use temporal dithering. Frustrating and surprising, but your explanation makes sense on why they may still do it.
Additionally, could it be that these devices have an even lower quality/cost display- so instead of an 8bit display, they are only 6 bit- further requiring temporal dithering to properly display the sRGB color space?
What are the symptoms you feel on these devices, at least before you made the changes that you outlined here?
And you had mentioned these steps that helped you on several different iPads and an iPhone. Any thoughts on the MacBook Air devices and a way to truly mitigate the issue there? I've been interested in the M2 MacBook Air, I love that it has no PWM, but of course when I tried one out for a few days- it wasn't bad, but I still had some symptoms with the dry/burning eyes- not severe, but enough that I had returned the device last year, fearing it was not worth keeping a $1000 device that may cause me to feel that way.
Oh, and you mentioned that Windows is more basic in how it displays its colors, thus not really using temporal dithering.
If someone wanted a tablet and didn't mind it being a Windows tablet- would that mean something like a Microsoft Surface should be a safe bet for those who are sensitive to temporal dithering?
Thank you!! I will try these steps as noted, on my iPad when I have a chance and will share the results.
On 6-bit, I doubt that any modern devices are still using 6-bit + FRC panels. Pretty sure it's either native 8-bit (with the signal being dithered at the OS/GPU level instead because of ColorSync, which is happening before being sent to the display) or 8-bit + 10-bit FRC nowadays.
My symptoms on the LCD devices before applying the double invert:
Common between all devices (iPad Pro 2018, iPad 6, SE 2) before double invert: When reading a dense block of lots of text, it feels like rainbow shimmery outlines around the words are appearing at random points in my peripheral vision, moving to other random points every time I move my eyes. This is basically the same symptom as temporal dithering on Mac, even though I'm pretty sure double invert doesn't actually disable dithering, just possibly reduce it by an amount I'm satisfied enough with. After applying the fix the shimmering seems to be gone, especially so on the SE 2 where text looks so clean now.
iPad Pro 2018 11"
Before double invert:
Everything appearing weirdly 3D, as if things were popping out of the screen like augmented reality despite the screen being physically flat. Not being able to focus on the entirety of a larger UI element or image at once. Large areas of white or empty space feeling like they're "compressing in on themselves" and not feeling as spacious as they should be. Every time an object passes through another object (especially when moving over a sharp line), for example when dragging something around in Freeform, the screen feels like it "ripples" in and out at that point and my eyes have to refocus every time that happens. Colors appearing too washed out even though my brain knows they're not actually washed out. The brightness always feeling like it's too dim or bright and needing to constantly readjust. Thin lines like the dividers in settings felt blurry and not pixel perfect, even though I could tell the sharpness was still there if I looked at the screen really closely.
Immediately after applying double invert for the first time:
When scrolling decelerates, the point where it finally stops feels much more noticeable and "grounded" instead of feeling like it keeps slightly moving forever. Screen feels way more flat and I don't notice the 3D effect anymore. The really wide search bar at the top of the Google Docs app actually surprised me, because usually I only remember seeing a small square-ish segment of it like it was in tunnel vision, but suddenly, I was able to see the whole search bar at once as this huge object wider than anything I'd felt on the screen before. The white background in the empty New Tab page in Safari, and the gaps between the top buttons and the search bar, felt WAY more spacious with "room to breathe" almost like I'd upgraded to a 12" iPad (and for clarification, this is still just the effects I notice with default display scaling, I double checked that I didn't accidentally switch to the iPad's More Space mode.) I could now just stare at this empty Safari screen and feel a really relaxing state of calm instead of feeling like the device was nagging me to stop waiting, tap something and keep moving, which is what it used to feel like. Although colors were technically "even more washed out" because of the side effect on red, they actually bothered me less and felt more pure to me. I found myself not needing to adjust the display brightness as much. All thin lines WAY more sharp and clear.
iPhone SE 2
Before double invert:
Unlike the iPad, colors felt properly vivid and the screen already felt flat, and there were a lot of use cases like typing in the Notes app that already felt pretty good even with default settings. But the "overlapping vibrating" issue occurred here too, and I felt something similar whenever a layout transition occurred, like during the zoom in animation when tapping an app icon or sliding over the side panel in Discord. Blurry thin lines present here too, but unlike the iPad they randomly become more or less clear depending on brightness or True Tone lighting conditions. But the worst thing though was that trying to read articles would cause my eyes to constantly refocus and start to feel sharp pressure and dryness around my eyes. Text felt too high contrast and not "balanced" with the white background behind it. This is actually different to my usual experiences with weird screens, since usually the effect on me is fatigue, tiredness and disorientation, but the SE didn't cause those with default settings and instead seemed to cause rapid dry eye instead.
After double invert:
Screen feels more still after animations stop, and actually even more flat than it already was. Overlapping vibration issue occurs wayyyyy less instead of every single time something passes a sharp object. Thin lines always appear crisp instead of randomly changing, even with True Tone and auto brightness still on. Can use for super long time now with no eye pressure or dryness at all. The desaturated reds are kind of a bummer but greens and blues actually still look really nice and vivid on this device, even after double invert. Went from debating whether I wanted to keep this device to being actually one of my most enjoyable Apple screens yet, and again the one I'm writing this very reply on.
iPad 6
Before double invert:
Most mild one, since screen already looked really crisp and didn't have the blurry feeling. But the shimmering while reading was still present, the screen also felt too glossy in a lot of cases, sometimes made me a bit disoriented to look at. But with this device it really depended on the time, some days the screen would feel amazing and I would use it completely fine, and other days it would randomly start giving me dry eye feeling and disorientation.
After double invert:
No disorientation feeling anymore and shimmer entirely gone, the feeling it had on the "good days" is much more consistent now, and the screen also feels slightly more still. The fact that double invert on sRGB devices actually boosts all saturation is a plus, since the screen actually becomes less washed out and way more vivid, which I prefer to how it looked before. Unlike the other two, still feeling like I need to adjust brightness at times though and very very slight dry eye, much less than before though.
———
On Windows options:
I wouldn't recommend a Surface as being Microsoft's own product, they probably do more deep integration between Windows and the hardware, possibly including more aggressive color management. I had a decent experience (compared to Mac) with a Surface in the past, but for some reason all Surface devices hide Intel graphics settings making things really difficult to control, like needing a registry key to disable Intel's annoying display power saving (adapative contrast that constantly washes everything out) instead of just checking a box like on other Windows PCs. I also had shimmery text issues but only under 50% brightness, so maybe there was PWM involved. It was still better than any Mac but this was also a really long time ago, so it's possibly even worse now, I honestly am not a big fan of Surface.
On the other hand, every single time I've seen anyone use a ThinkPad I've always thought the screen looked amazingly comfortable, so it might be worth looking into those. (Specifically the matte screen LCD models, not the OLED ones.) Double check any information on PWM ratings though before buying a Windows device, since backlight flicker can still end up ruining an otherwise decent screen.
This is regarding laptops though, since I'm not well versed on Windows tablets, maybe try reading some really dense text on a bunch of them in a store and seeing if any feel way better than Mac. Definitely look into Android tablets too.
———
For M1+ Macs, I'm honestly not sure what can be done, since they literally are only able to produce 10-bit color in all cases, even when connected to 8-bit displays. Dithering seems to be a part of M series Macs at even more than just the OS and GPU level.
Weirdly enough though, there is ONE Apple Silicon device that I have no issues at all with, which is the M1 iMac. My university has a bunch of them (4 thunderbolt ports version on Ventura, if that matters) and across all of them I've worked on, something is totally different about their display panels to any of the Apple laptops, colors feel so much more natural and the UI looks SO crisp. White backgrounds felt so much more uniform compared to other recent Apple devices and not overly bright. They even have the "spacious" feel similar to what my double inverted 2018 iPad feels like. I have no idea what's at play here, since the M1 iMac has a "billions of colors" screen which almost certainly means FRC dithering + whatever the OS does, but the screen still manages to feel great regardless. No idea if this still holds true on the new M3 iMacs though — despite them seemingly having the exact same hardware aside from the chip — I haven't had a chance to test one.
If Apple could just use whatever this M1 iMac screen is in all of their other devices, I'd honestly be pretty happy. But unfortunately, they don't, and since the iMac is a desktop this doesn't improve anything in regards to the state of screen comfort on portable Macs.
Finally, I want to mention that I am Gen Z, so the myth that this screen sensitivity issue only applies to older people with degrading vision is not true. In fact, I'd probably say that the biggest impact of these modern screens is on college students since reading and working with text is so constant.
Last edited:
@DisplaysShouldntBeTVs
Many thanks for your post. It actually validated what I observed with Surface Laptop and Surface Laptop Go. Both seemed to mess with my vision similar to MacBooks. And I couldn’t figure out if it was my mind playing with me. Unfortunately a lot of laptop makers are now moving to OLED.
And like you pointed out I am also noticing it with my SE 3. But at least it is somewhat usable compared to OLED which gives me pain within minutes.
Many thanks for your post. It actually validated what I observed with Surface Laptop and Surface Laptop Go. Both seemed to mess with my vision similar to MacBooks. And I couldn’t figure out if it was my mind playing with me. Unfortunately a lot of laptop makers are now moving to OLED.
And like you pointed out I am also noticing it with my SE 3. But at least it is somewhat usable compared to OLED which gives me pain within minutes.
Did you try the "double invert" accessibility settings on your SE 3 that I mentioned at the end of my first reply? Let me know if that method improves your SE 3 further like it did for my SE 2 — it completely fixed that display for me.
>> Enable Classic Invert in Display accessibility settings. Then enable Zoom, use the three figure gesture to zoom out all the way. Then enable the "Inverted" Zoom filter.
(so the the invert filter is "cancelling out" the first classic invert by inverting a second time over it, but suddenly, this makes colors appear slightly different, all P3 colors become disabled, and text feels way more comfortable to me.)
Last edited:
I just tried it now. It does seem to make a difference. Let me try it till tomorrow. All the colors are a bit off especially the reds.