I thought this was the reason we even had 120hz
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Enable Smoother 120Hz Browsing in Safari
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Enabling feature flags on daily drivers should come with the same warnings as running beta software. It could cause unpredictable or unexpected behaviours. If Apple have this behind a flag, there's probably a good reason for it.
More the adaptive refresh rate. It'll ramp up when smoothness is desirable like in scrolling, but when it's not needed the display won't refresh as frequently (good for battery life).
The scrolling is in fact 120hz (or up to it) - the article is wrong - this setting only impacts animations.
and yet, Apple made "Liquid Glass" draining battery. With a marketing green speech ?
Just to be clear - scrolling in safari is 120hz by default. This just lets animations in CSS etc run above 60hz, which is rare
Haven't tested in macOS yet since I don't use Safari (only Chrome) and my Studio Displays are 60Hz anyway, but on my iPhone 17 Pro it runs at 120Hz for scrolling as well.
The flag clearly says Page rendering.
Why would anyone think it’s going to affect scrolling? Those who are noticing any change are only seeing things.
MR should’ve done a bit more digging instead of writing an article just cuz they found something new.
Why would anyone think it’s going to affect scrolling? Those who are noticing any change are only seeing things.
MR should’ve done a bit more digging instead of writing an article just cuz they found something new.
Yes we know, however if the animations arent 60hz, it defeats the purpose generally.
Damn, I do remember this setting but always forget to turn it off every year when I get a new iPhone 😅🤦♂️
Especially considering this was a widely advertised “feature”. I’ve always wondered why scrolling didn’t feel any smoother on ProMotion displays.
This is like throttle-gate until Apple got caught, and then implemented battery control options to disable performance throttling.
As a massive fan, I’m starting to like Apple less and less these days. iOS 26, watchOS 26, and macOS 26 are full of major fresh bugs that Apple doesn’t seem to care about fixing at all. Even bugs in paid features from Apple One services like Apple TV and iCloud Hide my Mail.
Yet every website is “facebooked” now with obnoxious scrolling required to get past bloated filler.
Then what’s the point of even having 120hz display? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Interesting. Mine was ON I assume by default as I have never adjusted that setting (iPhone 17 Pro Max running latest 26.3 beta).
Guys. It makes no difference in scrolling. Safari already runs at 120Hz. Turn on 60Hz mode in accessibility settings and then you’ll see a massive difference.
Probably just ticks requestAnimationFrame() along every 8.33ms instead of every 16.66ms. I don't know about you, but I don't trust most JS devs these days to make their rAF callbacks not be stupid. I'm leaving this feature flag default.