Correct. Unless you are positioning the monitor further from you than normal. There is at least one person on this site who uses a TV at a distance instead of a typical monitor setup.
I can imagine people being a bit irritated about this.
You might have a 1440p monitor that you sit far enough away from that you want things scaled to sizes that would be used on 1080p. The best way to do this on OSX is to use SwitchResX (product in the blog/website) to run things at hi-DPI 1080p (4K) and then scale back down to 1440p. Just scaling up from non hi-DPI 1080 looks bad.
A real world example: on my 24” monitor, 1080p 1920x1080 native has noticeable jaggies on kanji, it looks smoother rendering at 2560x1440 and displaying that as 720p HiDPI
I have a small portable 13 inch 2k monitor that due to its size needs to rub in HiDPI mode but my M1 MacBook Pro is having none of it. Incredibly frustrating because there is absolutely no good reason for this!
I don’t mind if it requires “advanced” settings modes or terminal commands or whatever, but I should be able to configure a device I own to output any combination of resolution and display scaling that it’s capable of (and is supported by the connected display), regardless of what’s plugged in or whether someone at Apple can see a good reason to want to do so.
I made the switch from Windows/Linux to one of the new M1 MBPs and it's been mostly great. But one of the most surprising things has been how poorly MacOS handles high resolutions. Windows has completely nailed it at this point with easy DPI scaling, and even Linux w/ Wayland is easier to reason about. But MacOS has very few options for playing with resolution/DPI, and frankly looks like shit on 4K 27" displays. I had to disable font smoothing via the CLI just so the text wasn't a blurry mess.
I haven't used windows in a long time, but I thought there were still rough edges there, like certain programs (even certain windows menus) not scaling correctly and rendering tiny.
I'm currently using 2x 27 inch 4k displays in scaled mode (the second setting from the left) on an M1 mac and it looks great. Fonts look fine to me.
You're absolutely right about that. I've found anything above 125% causes odd behavior, like some menus refusing to word wrap and instead making me scroll left and right, as well as screwing up some programs like games.
Could you explain? We have three different 4K 27" screens around the house and for me the five options between Larger text and More space in Display Preferences are completely fine? I pick the size I want and the fonts are completely crisp? If you want to select resolutions, you can hold the Option key and click the Scaled radio button and you can select concrete resolutions.
May experience with Linux has been the opposite. Integer scaling works well (assuming that the toolkit of an application supports it), but once you use fractional scaling (even on GNOME on Wayland), a lot of CPU cycles are burnt for rendering, and many non-GNOME applications will be rendered at a lower DPI and scaled up and everything is blurry. I had a ThinkPad with a 1080p 14" screen and an external 4k 27" screen. Both were practically unusable. With the native resolution everything is too small, with 2x scaling everything is too big, and with 1.5-1.75 scaling, many applications are blurry. I ended up using the native resolution and scaling up the font size. At least text was not too small or to big, but a lot of widgets were tiny and barely usable.
In Windows the options themselves are fine, but there are too many legacy apps that do not support scaling and just look blurry :(. And with plugging/unplugging of an external screen, Windows was often not able to put windows back in the right places.
HiDPI scaling was one of the long list of issues that made be go back to macOS after using a ThinkPad with Windows and Linux for 7 months a year ago.
I guess the argument here is that those Windows problems could at least be solved. Blurry apps? Just right click on the app and override DPI settings. Apps not in the right place upon plugging/unplugging the cable? There are literally tens of apps that help with that, mostly free.
On my M1 Mac though, I need to pay $50 for eqMac2 so that I get to control the external display's speakers. Then I'll need to pay for Switchresx or Better Dummy just to get the resolution right on my non-4K display. And if money is not an issue, the security of these apps is definitely concerning. It all feels "hacky" to install app after app just to get the standard functionalities on macOS.
The fact that Apple removed HiDPI for non-4K displays just shows how non-free the whole ecosystem is. Definitely one more reason to wait for Asahi Linux on M1 Mac.
But the pages linked from that article are all about low-resolution screens like 24/27” 1080P or 1200P? Not sure how that relates to most 4K screens unless they are extremely large (larger than 27”).
Like I said, all my 4K 27” screens show crispy text on macOS.
> I had to disable font smoothing via the CLI just so the text wasn't a blurry mess.
This probably means it was trying to do subpixel rendering, but under incorrect assumptions about what the subpixel layout was. Problems of this type have recently become pretty pervasive.
>since the video driver is then completely capable of handing HiDPI resolutions.
This is not good evidence. It may be able to nominally handle it, but can’t handle it under other conditions that are important to Apple. Display HW is all about bandwidth management, and scaling etc may consume not-budgeted bandwidth.
A lot of people think "profit motive" when something they think should work doesn't. This is especially true with Apple.
(I mean at a distant-enough remove, sure, everything any company does is for profit. But seeing a locked door and assuming it must be to support a ticket vendor ignores a universe of other explanations.)
Probably it's there for sensationalist reasons. People like conspiracies and some small guys uncovering the evils of the behemoth is always a popular topic.
The article is likely a marketing effort, the website where the article is published sells software for switching resolution. I wouldn't read too much into it.
There is zoom available under accessibility in the settings.HiDPI is not and never was intended as a accessibility feature. You want a feature like HiDPI for accessibility but that supposed to be feature is not HiDPI.
"you can manually set the resolution to make text and objects appear larger on your screen," -Apple Support
There are different issues people have with their eyes so please abstain on defending Apple and telling people that are doing it wrong, in my case I have to use a combination of big fonts, Zoom and Text to speech (I won't waste my money on a 2k or 4k screen for my bad eyes but if somehow one would land on my desk I would for sure change the resolution )
It’s all fine mate and I am not telling anyone what to do I am telling someone that he uses a feature in a way it was not intended. So if he needs an accessibility feature like HiDPI he should ask for it instead of basing his workflow on something that can go away in a whim because it was a workaround in the first place.
One is sharp and one is either tiny or a blurry mess. I honestly believe you don't know what HiDPI is or does different to a normal resolution change maybe this easy to understand blog post can help https://blog.elementary.io/what-is-hidpi/
Ofc... we could also start using an established technical term for something completely different. Looking at you USB 3.X O_O
Do you think someone with accessibility issues care about sharp fonts? Let me tell you NO , maybe for some minority but we are just trying to have text/buttons large enough to be able to read and click them, we don't care that fonts don't look crisp for a person with good eyes.
It’s not about fonts did you even understand the article? Yikes mate at least try to understand about what you are arguing instead of going all emotional.
Can you be less cryptic and on topic?
Someone said he uses the DPI settings for accessibility reasons and you the expert say to use Zoom instead because you know better, can you copy paste from the article what we are doing wrong and tell us exactly what is the correct solution, maybe link to Apple(preferably not GNOME article that says DO NOT USE DPI scaling for accessibility.
I use both methods int he past and it really depends on OS features and the apps you have to use but let me know your expert opinon.
I don't know mate you are talking in circles there is no HiDPI option if you are not on a built-in or 4k+ screen. The OP of the comment thread and the OP of the topic are talking about using a feature that was never public and had to be enabled on the command line. They just disabled this workaround. You also don't understand the feature itself and you are also not understanding why it's bad as an impaired user to base your workflow on unsupported hacks. Here are the accessibility overviews for macOS and Windows [0] [1] and there is no mention of HiDPI in it because it's not an accessibility feature. I really hope you are trolling but no matter if you are or not this is my last post in this comment thread.
Ps: You can save your passive aggressive undertone for reddit.
The 'to push 4k monitor sales' inclusion the title seems to not reflect the content of the article, which does not postulate a theory regarding Apple's intent. Apple doesn't even sell 4k monitors, so a more compelling case for nefarious intent would seem to be made by reserving HiDPI only for Apple made displays, or some arbitrary minimum like 5k.
The submission title is clear editorializing in violation of the HN guidelines: please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize
The correct title is Why isn't there any HiDPI resolution on my M1 Mac ?
Questions can be linkbait, but aren't necessarily linkbait. I'd say "Why isn't there any HiDPI resolution on my M1 Mac?" is a perfectly cromulent title - it tells you clearly what the topic is.
Yes, that's definitely not ok. We've changed it now.
Submitted title was "Apple Intentionally Disabled HiDPI on M1 Macs, No Support for non-4K Monitors". Submitters: please don't editorialize titles like that. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it in a comment in the thread. Then your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
Edit: Since this has been a problem in other cases (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31126605 was bad enough to post about, and there have been others), I'm removing submission privileges from this account until we get some reason to believe that it won't keep recurring.
It was actually worse than that. Before people complained it was something like "Apple intentionally disabled HiDPI on M1 Macs to drive monitor sales".
If you have a 5K2K monitor, as I do, then you are unable to enjoy decent 1.25 scaling. Everything looks pixelated because Apple don’t allow a ‘proper’ HiDPI mode with M1s.
The same monitor is absolutely fine on a 2019 Macbook Pro.
If you use BetterDummy, it creates a ‘fake’ display to mirror to. The result is beautifully clear display on the 5K2K.
This is the crux of the issue. M1 macs can absolutely do nice 1.25 scaling on a 5120*2160 display to give crisp text in the 140dpi range but they disable it.
Plug any random monitor into one of those 2019 MBP 16" models, and there's a good chance it'll spin up its fans to the max in an attempt to escape, and failing that, passively resist further abuse by overheating and throttling itself to a standstill.
This might just be them overtightening in response to that problem of old (whilst continuing to deny its existence, of course heh).
Edit: Plugging in an external monitor (not all of them, seems random) will cause the laptop's GPU to instantly 4x its powerdraw to about 20 watts, which then lasts for the duration of that connection.
I've had great results with BetterDummy[0] for my M1 make with a non-4K external monitor.
It's free and open source with an optional Pro version. I've been using it longer than the Pro version has been around, so I'm not familiar with what advantages it may have over the free version.
62 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] thread[no private knowledge of the issue, opinion is my own only]
I can imagine people being a bit irritated about this.
I don’t mind if it requires “advanced” settings modes or terminal commands or whatever, but I should be able to configure a device I own to output any combination of resolution and display scaling that it’s capable of (and is supported by the connected display), regardless of what’s plugged in or whether someone at Apple can see a good reason to want to do so.
I'm currently using 2x 27 inch 4k displays in scaled mode (the second setting from the left) on an M1 mac and it looks great. Fonts look fine to me.
It’s not 2X integer scaling but I don’t notice at all.
Could you explain? We have three different 4K 27" screens around the house and for me the five options between Larger text and More space in Display Preferences are completely fine? I pick the size I want and the fonts are completely crisp? If you want to select resolutions, you can hold the Option key and click the Scaled radio button and you can select concrete resolutions.
May experience with Linux has been the opposite. Integer scaling works well (assuming that the toolkit of an application supports it), but once you use fractional scaling (even on GNOME on Wayland), a lot of CPU cycles are burnt for rendering, and many non-GNOME applications will be rendered at a lower DPI and scaled up and everything is blurry. I had a ThinkPad with a 1080p 14" screen and an external 4k 27" screen. Both were practically unusable. With the native resolution everything is too small, with 2x scaling everything is too big, and with 1.5-1.75 scaling, many applications are blurry. I ended up using the native resolution and scaling up the font size. At least text was not too small or to big, but a lot of widgets were tiny and barely usable.
In Windows the options themselves are fine, but there are too many legacy apps that do not support scaling and just look blurry :(. And with plugging/unplugging of an external screen, Windows was often not able to put windows back in the right places.
HiDPI scaling was one of the long list of issues that made be go back to macOS after using a ThinkPad with Windows and Linux for 7 months a year ago.
On my M1 Mac though, I need to pay $50 for eqMac2 so that I get to control the external display's speakers. Then I'll need to pay for Switchresx or Better Dummy just to get the resolution right on my non-4K display. And if money is not an issue, the security of these apps is definitely concerning. It all feels "hacky" to install app after app just to get the standard functionalities on macOS.
The fact that Apple removed HiDPI for non-4K displays just shows how non-free the whole ecosystem is. Definitely one more reason to wait for Asahi Linux on M1 Mac.
Like I said, all my 4K 27” screens show crispy text on macOS.
This probably means it was trying to do subpixel rendering, but under incorrect assumptions about what the subpixel layout was. Problems of this type have recently become pretty pervasive.
This is not good evidence. It may be able to nominally handle it, but can’t handle it under other conditions that are important to Apple. Display HW is all about bandwidth management, and scaling etc may consume not-budgeted bandwidth.
(I mean at a distant-enough remove, sure, everything any company does is for profit. But seeing a locked door and assuming it must be to support a ticket vendor ignores a universe of other explanations.)
The article is likely a marketing effort, the website where the article is published sells software for switching resolution. I wouldn't read too much into it.
"you can manually set the resolution to make text and objects appear larger on your screen," -Apple Support
There are different issues people have with their eyes so please abstain on defending Apple and telling people that are doing it wrong, in my case I have to use a combination of big fonts, Zoom and Text to speech (I won't waste my money on a 2k or 4k screen for my bad eyes but if somehow one would land on my desk I would for sure change the resolution )
https://xkcd.com/1172/
Can you explain exactly why you think so relative to accessibility and not on implementation details.
Ofc... we could also start using an established technical term for something completely different. Looking at you USB 3.X O_O
I use both methods int he past and it really depends on OS features and the apps you have to use but let me know your expert opinon.
Ps: You can save your passive aggressive undertone for reddit.
[0] https://www.apple.com/accessibility/vision/ [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows
The correct title is Why isn't there any HiDPI resolution on my M1 Mac ?
Submitted title was "Apple Intentionally Disabled HiDPI on M1 Macs, No Support for non-4K Monitors". Submitters: please don't editorialize titles like that. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it in a comment in the thread. Then your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: Since this has been a problem in other cases (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31126605 was bad enough to post about, and there have been others), I'm removing submission privileges from this account until we get some reason to believe that it won't keep recurring.
The same monitor is absolutely fine on a 2019 Macbook Pro.
If you use BetterDummy, it creates a ‘fake’ display to mirror to. The result is beautifully clear display on the 5K2K.
This is the crux of the issue. M1 macs can absolutely do nice 1.25 scaling on a 5120*2160 display to give crisp text in the 140dpi range but they disable it.
That is the issue IMHO.
This might just be them overtightening in response to that problem of old (whilst continuing to deny its existence, of course heh).
Edit: Plugging in an external monitor (not all of them, seems random) will cause the laptop's GPU to instantly 4x its powerdraw to about 20 watts, which then lasts for the duration of that connection.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2019-16-is-hot-noisy-wi...
I.e, a monitor with a resolution of 5120x2160.
It's free and open source with an optional Pro version. I've been using it longer than the Pro version has been around, so I'm not familiar with what advantages it may have over the free version.
[0] https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDummy
To me the options either result to too big UI, or jaggy text with regular sized UI.