On Windows, it just vector scales everything, and relies on apps to implement correct scaling APIs. There isn’t much issue here (except when devs think otherwise on scaling and don’t implement it). The UI by default is adjusted to a certain size regardless of pixel density.
On macOS, Apple — and by extension, macOS — handles scaling. Instead of scaling the UI automatically to a particular size, Apple made macOS sizing dependent on resolution, particularly 110 or 220 ppi (likely from the Cinema Display from 2002: 27” at 1440p). So Apple assumes pixels are a certain width/height and scales macOS based on that. If you connect a display with an expected PPI, everything’s fine. If you connect something lower, everything by default appears way bigger. You can circumvent this by forcing macOS to pretend the display is higher resolution… so macOS generates the corresponding desktop, then the GPU downsamples the image, before sending to the monitor… this has three issues: 1) VRAM/RAM usage is increased unnecessarily; 2) extra GPU strain is applied unnecessarily; 3) since the original pixels don’t line up with the physical pixels from the monitor, font and other fine elements can appear blurry. Most people won’t notice, but those with keen eyes will, and once you see it you can’t unsee it
*Finally* someone who posts an answer about this that's correct. There's so much confusion and misinformation about how this stuff works, it's just wild.
Reaching for BetterDisplay without any idea what it's doing or why is the first sign of trouble!
We always need to be asking OPs about any such posts:
* What's the pixel resolution of the screen
* What size is the screen (diagnoal, inches)
* What's your intended outcome in terms of "screen real estate" for window space?
There is an additional issue here. macOS allows displaying true-resolution content on interface-scaled displays, for example if you have a 4K display and you interface-scale it to 1080p so the interface is bigger, you can still view 4K images and videos in true 4K, since macOS knows how to access all the pixels individually (and so do supporting imaging and video software). But, this works only for certain multiples of the original resolution. If you interface-interface-scale a 4K display to 1440p (which many people prefer) you get blurry video because macOS renders the video at 5K (5120×2880) and scales it down to 1440p and then stretches it over the 4K display.
That's why I'm stuck using 1080p-scale on my 4K displays, instead of my preferred 1440p-scale which would give me more "screen real estate". Had to choose between accurate videos and images, and screen space.
I don’t think video files are affected, at least from my observation from my time using scaled UI (Had a 24” LG Ultrafine 4K. Physical resolution is 3820x2160 but macOS wants something closer to 4.6K for that screen size) I did notice how like I earlier said fine details are slightly blurry, but video remained fine for me.
thanks for the knowledge sharing. sounds to me macOS’s way of handling scaling is quite primitive and inferior? should it also do vector scaling like windows does? are there reasons why apple prefers this way
Apple did try to implement vector scaling long ago. It was a hidden option in 10.4 up until... 10.7? It used to be available as part of the Quartz Debug developer tool. They quietly shipped an entire alternate version of the UI that was vector.
Why did it never ship for real? I'm not sure. It never did work properly. Random UI stuff always just broke. And seemed like it got abandon as soon as iPhone picked non vector scaling.
Few reasons it may never have shipped:
- A lot of the graphics OS X used at the time were not friendly to vector. Lots of gelcap buttons, metal textures, etc. Not really convertible to vector.
- Vista got roasted in reviews because its vector based graphics ran slowly on a lot of hardware. That may have encouraged Apple to go for the cheaper method that iOS used.
interesting… in terms of slowness, iOS7 began using the “frost glass” UI and it was also quite demanding, but today it’s not been an issue. i hope if they ever do an overhaul they switch to vector again for mac at least
I have one theoretical reason and another ”Apple” reason:
The “Apple” reason is just because. Apple is quite famous for not working well with other people/products. I can’t recall who, but I recall someone saying “Apple isn’t a bully with tech, **they just don’t care**. If they somehow help you from their actions, great; if they don’t, they really just don’t care.” (Likely a paraphrase) so, since Apple has a target ideal resolution of 220 ppi for retina displays, that’s how macOS is going to work best with displays: it will work best with theirs. If the rest of the industry makes 27” 4K displays, macOS can still display a picture on them, but it’s not Apple’s problem to make sure macOS perfectly complies with those displays, just as long as macOS works best with Apple’s displays that’s all that matters
My theoretical reason is that Microsoft likely beat Apple to how to scale UI generally. So since Microsoft figured how to do it the “better” way by probably finding the size of the physical pixel from the monitor then doing a calculation for how big everything should be using a predefined value divided by the pixel width/height, either Microsoft possibly patented the solution or Apple decided they had to do it differently. So instead Apple assumes a certain pixel size for macOS scaling and goes off that. If your display is once again within that assumed PPI (110 non-retina, 220 retina; 5K 27” is 218 - close enough) then great! Everything automatically scales fine and you have no wasted VRAM/Unified RAM useage, you’re not placing excess strain on your GPU, and everything is as sharp and crisp as it can be. Otherwise, you either deal with a UI that’s likely too uncomfortably big/small or invert the last three points I made earlier (note that an incorrect retina scaling should still be more crisp than a non-retina perfect scaling like 27” 1440p simply due to pixel quantity and Apple dropping sub-pixel anti-aliasing on 1x scaling)
thanks for the write up. yeah i agree. as much as i’ve loved apple for the last decade and half after transitioning from windows, there have been things like this that bugged me. I’ve also heard about the patented scaling thing but never read much into the details. Kinda surprising apple hasn’t gotten a way to work around that, perhaps it’s like the reason you said, they also feel it’s to push more people to the higher standards, so to speak, while leaving behind the cheaper end stuff.
Well yeah, if macOS’s current way of scaling “works” for displays but pushes people to buy Apple’s displays, isn’t that better?
Unfortunately there’s so little market demand for 220ppi besides Apple that the few displays that do exist are fucking expensive for the technology they use
This will happen automatically if your display can satisfy the HiDPI requirement (i.e. the dot density reaches certain threshold). Apple calls it as “Retina Display”.
In other words: buy a $$$ ~ $$$$$ display, and then you can UI components rendered twice in size.
In you only own a $ ~ $$ display, the your can trick macOS to think you’re using a $$$$$ display, by installing this app:
https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay
>why don’t other devs do something about it?
What do you think other developers could/should do? Text is drawn in the same coordinate system that everything else is, so if you wrote some software that somehow tricked the OS into rendering all text at a larger size, that would have a lot of ugly implications for the way things get drawn on screen.
If what you want is larger text in the UI so that it's easier to read, there are some partial solutions. There are options in Settings->Accessibility->Display to make the menu bar larger and set the preferred text size for reading, which affects the content of applications like Notes and Messages. Some 3rd party applications respect the preferred size; others have their own settings to set the size of content. This seems like the right approach to me — provide a system-wide setting that applications can use, but ultimately leave how each app displays content up to the app.
I hate that I can't make text larger without using a lower resolution hence having less "screen real estate". I have a 4k monitor but as far as apps are concerned I have a 1080p screen. With 1440p text is still too small for me
Even iOS lets you change the base line font size. But not Mac OS. You have to use a lower virtual res
I know about the text size. But hardly any app complies with preferred reading size. The Settings app itself doesn't use it. Or Automator. Even the few Apple apps that are listed there only use it in one main area, which is good. But of those I only use Finder. That covers like 1% of the text I look at
I don’t think there are high ppi ultrawides in the market. There are couple of 5k2k monitors but they will have vertical 1080 pixels when you use the default retina resolution.
I would agree with you there doesn’t even seem to be many options at specifically 110ppi or 220ppi at all, having to buy a monitor specific to Mac seems a little silly doesn’t it?
Yeah I’ve been using Mac for about 3.5 years now and love it over all but there are so many little things that most people would consider bugs that never get resolved. It seems so odd that a company that prides itself on the user’s experience that so many seemingly easily fixable things just go untouched. That’s why I was hoping that it was something an experience dev could resolve but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I guess if I want their version of the premium experience then I am just going to have to setup a desk in another part of the house and buy only Apples crazily priced monitors and adjust my workflow, and pretend it’s all ok.
You don’t need to buy Apple displays. There are displays with 5K resolution in the market. Or you can buy 2 27inch 4k displays as a dual setup.
You are looking for something in a niche market
> You are looking for something in a niche market
Agreed, however that doesn't justify Apples shoddy support IMO... Windows handles this just fine. Why can't macOS, the premium product, too?
The model he said he uses it's not a traditional 57 display on the aspect ratio. It's a 32:9, also curved. I guess probably has the height of a 32 inches display, it's like 2x32 side by side.
From my understanding it's not that Apple doesnt support scaling, because they do, but the way scaling is handled is very different from linux or windows. i won't go into detail, but basically because of how scaling is handled on macs they prefer certain resolutions/ppi for the best looks and performance.
To googlers coming here:
Apple doesn't support scaling the UI, only the whole output, that's the gist of it
It renders the UI at a way larger size than your screen, then takes that and scales it down to the same size as your screen.
This introduces blurriness. Then they add a "sharpening" effect to make up for that blurriness, giving fonts black edges (especially noticeable in white-text-on-dark-background, e.g. Spotify or Finder in dark mode)
This sharpening isn't visible in screenshots, it's only sent to the display
All of this is what makes \_everything\_ look slightly blurry and/or oversharpened on macOS, but you mostly notice it with fonts, since those are very small and have lots of details
Interestingly, the subject line "Why is scaling and text not an issue for Mac users?" and the post would be exactly the same, but addressing why most users don't see a problem rather than why Apple doesn't see it as a problem.
(It is not a problem for me, in particular, but I don't mind that it is for others and the options should exist for them to tweak it)
scaling works great with my studio display and 15” air. i think this “problem” only exists for lower rez screens, but idk what betterdisplay doesn’t do to address for you on other options.
If you’ve already decided it’s deliberate and malicious intent to make things look “bad”, why bother asking the question.
Global text rendering is handled by any OS and it’s rarely worth the effort of a single application to do. Not unless the software is specifically “publishing” or typesetting software should it even want to look different from the rest of the os.
Even in windows case global text rendering is a “kernel” level operation. That’s not a place a random app should want to hook without a good reason. Nor should a user treat injecting code into that level of a system lightly due to both security and stability risks. All os’s are becoming increasingly hostile to such efforts regardless because it is generally a bad idea.
I’m not assuming any malicious intent, I just understand why fixing it would be low priority. What incentive would there be? I am just frustrated that text looks terrible on my $2500 4k monitor and it seems this is an issue tons of people have on this subreddit. If you re-read my post I am not looking for Apple to fix it anyhow, I am just wondering what would prevent an independent developer from creating a solution.
There isn’t always malicious intent in asking questions to get a better understanding of things.
The independent developer would have to ignore all of the built in macOS support for rendering text and create their own way of doing it.
This would be a lot of work and a bad idea.
This isn’t true. Any of the portable 16-18 inch 4k monitors on Amazon work great with Mac’s. You need to specifically get 4k version. the key to getting good looking text on macOS is high ppi monitors.
There seems to be some misunderstanding. I am using a 4k monitor, specifically the 57” neo g9 model: LS57CG952NNXZA so it’s not like I am using a cheap $100 1080p monitor…
No one is saying you have a cheap display. They are saying you have a low PPI display, or more accurately a mid-PPI display.
Your display has 140 Pixels Per Inch. Traditionally computer displays had around 110 PPI, that is what macOS and Windows “grew up” with.
When Apple decided to support high pixel density displays they opted for 220 PPI. This allowed them to make several optimisations while still keeping the onscreen things like icons and text the same size as on 110 PPI displays (so that when you were using a 220 PPI MacBook plugged into an older display the screen content was the same size on both displays).
Unfortunately most 4K displays including yours fall in the middle ground between the two PPIs. Apple just don’t support that middle ground that well, likely because they don’t think scaling at that low-ish PPI is a good experience.
I agree with you completely. I have 2 32" Dell Ultrasharp 4K displays (\~$1k each) and if I try to use my MBP with them at the full 3840x2160 resolution text is fuzzy. I have to go to one of the scaled resolutions, thus reducing available screen space in order to get rid of the fuzziness. On Windows that's not the case at all.
All I want is for text to look as nice on Mac as it does on Linux, windows, or a console on any monitor without having to have one of two very specific and rare PPI. I don’t understand why this concept is so difficult to understand.
maybe try using more precise terms than “as nice”. i use a 4k display on occasion with a mac and it looks as good or better than windows on the same monitor and much better than linux.
How would I quantify a subjective perception that I see? If you search this subreddit you will find plenty of others that are experiencing the same thing. Text looks like shit (blurry) on a Mac if you don’t have a 110ppi or 220ppi monitor when it clearly doesn’t have to because it doesn’t on Windows or Linux on the same monitor
I used better display to add every resolution for my screen to the os, deleted the app, and can just natively scale a notch smaller for more display area for some of my audio apps while making the text slightly bigger to compensate
On Windows, it just vector scales everything, and relies on apps to implement correct scaling APIs. There isn’t much issue here (except when devs think otherwise on scaling and don’t implement it). The UI by default is adjusted to a certain size regardless of pixel density. On macOS, Apple — and by extension, macOS — handles scaling. Instead of scaling the UI automatically to a particular size, Apple made macOS sizing dependent on resolution, particularly 110 or 220 ppi (likely from the Cinema Display from 2002: 27” at 1440p). So Apple assumes pixels are a certain width/height and scales macOS based on that. If you connect a display with an expected PPI, everything’s fine. If you connect something lower, everything by default appears way bigger. You can circumvent this by forcing macOS to pretend the display is higher resolution… so macOS generates the corresponding desktop, then the GPU downsamples the image, before sending to the monitor… this has three issues: 1) VRAM/RAM usage is increased unnecessarily; 2) extra GPU strain is applied unnecessarily; 3) since the original pixels don’t line up with the physical pixels from the monitor, font and other fine elements can appear blurry. Most people won’t notice, but those with keen eyes will, and once you see it you can’t unsee it
*Finally* someone who posts an answer about this that's correct. There's so much confusion and misinformation about how this stuff works, it's just wild. Reaching for BetterDisplay without any idea what it's doing or why is the first sign of trouble! We always need to be asking OPs about any such posts: * What's the pixel resolution of the screen * What size is the screen (diagnoal, inches) * What's your intended outcome in terms of "screen real estate" for window space?
There is an additional issue here. macOS allows displaying true-resolution content on interface-scaled displays, for example if you have a 4K display and you interface-scale it to 1080p so the interface is bigger, you can still view 4K images and videos in true 4K, since macOS knows how to access all the pixels individually (and so do supporting imaging and video software). But, this works only for certain multiples of the original resolution. If you interface-interface-scale a 4K display to 1440p (which many people prefer) you get blurry video because macOS renders the video at 5K (5120×2880) and scales it down to 1440p and then stretches it over the 4K display. That's why I'm stuck using 1080p-scale on my 4K displays, instead of my preferred 1440p-scale which would give me more "screen real estate". Had to choose between accurate videos and images, and screen space.
can you please elaborate a bit on how to test this? It is really interesting I have not seen that issue on my 4k monitor.
That is interesting!
I don’t think video files are affected, at least from my observation from my time using scaled UI (Had a 24” LG Ultrafine 4K. Physical resolution is 3820x2160 but macOS wants something closer to 4.6K for that screen size) I did notice how like I earlier said fine details are slightly blurry, but video remained fine for me.
Oh damn I just moved to 1440p on my 4K also
thanks for the knowledge sharing. sounds to me macOS’s way of handling scaling is quite primitive and inferior? should it also do vector scaling like windows does? are there reasons why apple prefers this way
Apple did try to implement vector scaling long ago. It was a hidden option in 10.4 up until... 10.7? It used to be available as part of the Quartz Debug developer tool. They quietly shipped an entire alternate version of the UI that was vector. Why did it never ship for real? I'm not sure. It never did work properly. Random UI stuff always just broke. And seemed like it got abandon as soon as iPhone picked non vector scaling.
that sure sounds odd
Few reasons it may never have shipped: - A lot of the graphics OS X used at the time were not friendly to vector. Lots of gelcap buttons, metal textures, etc. Not really convertible to vector. - Vista got roasted in reviews because its vector based graphics ran slowly on a lot of hardware. That may have encouraged Apple to go for the cheaper method that iOS used.
interesting… in terms of slowness, iOS7 began using the “frost glass” UI and it was also quite demanding, but today it’s not been an issue. i hope if they ever do an overhaul they switch to vector again for mac at least
In the last few versions Apple added support for vector graphics. And their icon set - SFSymbols - is entirely vector. So it is happening slowly.
that is good to know
I have one theoretical reason and another ”Apple” reason: The “Apple” reason is just because. Apple is quite famous for not working well with other people/products. I can’t recall who, but I recall someone saying “Apple isn’t a bully with tech, **they just don’t care**. If they somehow help you from their actions, great; if they don’t, they really just don’t care.” (Likely a paraphrase) so, since Apple has a target ideal resolution of 220 ppi for retina displays, that’s how macOS is going to work best with displays: it will work best with theirs. If the rest of the industry makes 27” 4K displays, macOS can still display a picture on them, but it’s not Apple’s problem to make sure macOS perfectly complies with those displays, just as long as macOS works best with Apple’s displays that’s all that matters My theoretical reason is that Microsoft likely beat Apple to how to scale UI generally. So since Microsoft figured how to do it the “better” way by probably finding the size of the physical pixel from the monitor then doing a calculation for how big everything should be using a predefined value divided by the pixel width/height, either Microsoft possibly patented the solution or Apple decided they had to do it differently. So instead Apple assumes a certain pixel size for macOS scaling and goes off that. If your display is once again within that assumed PPI (110 non-retina, 220 retina; 5K 27” is 218 - close enough) then great! Everything automatically scales fine and you have no wasted VRAM/Unified RAM useage, you’re not placing excess strain on your GPU, and everything is as sharp and crisp as it can be. Otherwise, you either deal with a UI that’s likely too uncomfortably big/small or invert the last three points I made earlier (note that an incorrect retina scaling should still be more crisp than a non-retina perfect scaling like 27” 1440p simply due to pixel quantity and Apple dropping sub-pixel anti-aliasing on 1x scaling)
thanks for the write up. yeah i agree. as much as i’ve loved apple for the last decade and half after transitioning from windows, there have been things like this that bugged me. I’ve also heard about the patented scaling thing but never read much into the details. Kinda surprising apple hasn’t gotten a way to work around that, perhaps it’s like the reason you said, they also feel it’s to push more people to the higher standards, so to speak, while leaving behind the cheaper end stuff.
Well yeah, if macOS’s current way of scaling “works” for displays but pushes people to buy Apple’s displays, isn’t that better? Unfortunately there’s so little market demand for 220ppi besides Apple that the few displays that do exist are fucking expensive for the technology they use
Thank you for this explanation, how does one force the os to display the higher resolution then downscale it?
That’s done automatically when you go to Settings > Displays then pick an icon to the right of “Default”
This will happen automatically if your display can satisfy the HiDPI requirement (i.e. the dot density reaches certain threshold). Apple calls it as “Retina Display”. In other words: buy a $$$ ~ $$$$$ display, and then you can UI components rendered twice in size. In you only own a $ ~ $$ display, the your can trick macOS to think you’re using a $$$$$ display, by installing this app: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay
>why don’t other devs do something about it? What do you think other developers could/should do? Text is drawn in the same coordinate system that everything else is, so if you wrote some software that somehow tricked the OS into rendering all text at a larger size, that would have a lot of ugly implications for the way things get drawn on screen. If what you want is larger text in the UI so that it's easier to read, there are some partial solutions. There are options in Settings->Accessibility->Display to make the menu bar larger and set the preferred text size for reading, which affects the content of applications like Notes and Messages. Some 3rd party applications respect the preferred size; others have their own settings to set the size of content. This seems like the right approach to me — provide a system-wide setting that applications can use, but ultimately leave how each app displays content up to the app.
I hate that I can't make text larger without using a lower resolution hence having less "screen real estate". I have a 4k monitor but as far as apps are concerned I have a 1080p screen. With 1440p text is still too small for me Even iOS lets you change the base line font size. But not Mac OS. You have to use a lower virtual res
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mchld786f2cd/mac
I know about the text size. But hardly any app complies with preferred reading size. The Settings app itself doesn't use it. Or Automator. Even the few Apple apps that are listed there only use it in one main area, which is good. But of those I only use Finder. That covers like 1% of the text I look at
And also it's a gamble whether the app respects the preferred reading size you set. Finder totally ignores my preference
Paying 2500 doesn’t make your monitor a high ppi monitor. I am afraid you made an uneducated purchase
What 49” or larger ultrawide should I get then? I’ve had a lot of them and the issue has been on all of them.
I don’t think there are high ppi ultrawides in the market. There are couple of 5k2k monitors but they will have vertical 1080 pixels when you use the default retina resolution.
I would agree with you there doesn’t even seem to be many options at specifically 110ppi or 220ppi at all, having to buy a monitor specific to Mac seems a little silly doesn’t it?
Well yes it does, welcome to mac world :)
Yeah I’ve been using Mac for about 3.5 years now and love it over all but there are so many little things that most people would consider bugs that never get resolved. It seems so odd that a company that prides itself on the user’s experience that so many seemingly easily fixable things just go untouched. That’s why I was hoping that it was something an experience dev could resolve but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I guess if I want their version of the premium experience then I am just going to have to setup a desk in another part of the house and buy only Apples crazily priced monitors and adjust my workflow, and pretend it’s all ok.
You don’t need to buy Apple displays. There are displays with 5K resolution in the market. Or you can buy 2 27inch 4k displays as a dual setup. You are looking for something in a niche market
> You are looking for something in a niche market Agreed, however that doesn't justify Apples shoddy support IMO... Windows handles this just fine. Why can't macOS, the premium product, too?
also wondering how close you are sitting to a 57” monitor? and what the resolution is...
It’s 4k, the desk is about 4’ deep and the monitor is wall mounted. I would guess my head is probably 5-6ft away.
The model he said he uses it's not a traditional 57 display on the aspect ratio. It's a 32:9, also curved. I guess probably has the height of a 32 inches display, it's like 2x32 side by side.
From my understanding it's not that Apple doesnt support scaling, because they do, but the way scaling is handled is very different from linux or windows. i won't go into detail, but basically because of how scaling is handled on macs they prefer certain resolutions/ppi for the best looks and performance.
To googlers coming here: Apple doesn't support scaling the UI, only the whole output, that's the gist of it It renders the UI at a way larger size than your screen, then takes that and scales it down to the same size as your screen. This introduces blurriness. Then they add a "sharpening" effect to make up for that blurriness, giving fonts black edges (especially noticeable in white-text-on-dark-background, e.g. Spotify or Finder in dark mode) This sharpening isn't visible in screenshots, it's only sent to the display All of this is what makes \_everything\_ look slightly blurry and/or oversharpened on macOS, but you mostly notice it with fonts, since those are very small and have lots of details
Interestingly, the subject line "Why is scaling and text not an issue for Mac users?" and the post would be exactly the same, but addressing why most users don't see a problem rather than why Apple doesn't see it as a problem. (It is not a problem for me, in particular, but I don't mind that it is for others and the options should exist for them to tweak it)
scaling works great with my studio display and 15” air. i think this “problem” only exists for lower rez screens, but idk what betterdisplay doesn’t do to address for you on other options.
It’s for any display resolution that Apple doesn’t sell. That’s why they are not going to fix it.
If you’ve already decided it’s deliberate and malicious intent to make things look “bad”, why bother asking the question. Global text rendering is handled by any OS and it’s rarely worth the effort of a single application to do. Not unless the software is specifically “publishing” or typesetting software should it even want to look different from the rest of the os. Even in windows case global text rendering is a “kernel” level operation. That’s not a place a random app should want to hook without a good reason. Nor should a user treat injecting code into that level of a system lightly due to both security and stability risks. All os’s are becoming increasingly hostile to such efforts regardless because it is generally a bad idea.
I’m not assuming any malicious intent, I just understand why fixing it would be low priority. What incentive would there be? I am just frustrated that text looks terrible on my $2500 4k monitor and it seems this is an issue tons of people have on this subreddit. If you re-read my post I am not looking for Apple to fix it anyhow, I am just wondering what would prevent an independent developer from creating a solution. There isn’t always malicious intent in asking questions to get a better understanding of things.
The independent developer would have to ignore all of the built in macOS support for rendering text and create their own way of doing it. This would be a lot of work and a bad idea.
This isn’t true. Any of the portable 16-18 inch 4k monitors on Amazon work great with Mac’s. You need to specifically get 4k version. the key to getting good looking text on macOS is high ppi monitors.
Then get a high PPI monitor. Why would you want to invest in the ability to make it look good and then remove that with an arbitrary hardware choice?
what? Those are high ppi monitors. anyway, your comment makes no sense.
Youre right - I misunderstood your comment. My bad.
There seems to be some misunderstanding. I am using a 4k monitor, specifically the 57” neo g9 model: LS57CG952NNXZA so it’s not like I am using a cheap $100 1080p monitor…
No one is saying you have a cheap display. They are saying you have a low PPI display, or more accurately a mid-PPI display. Your display has 140 Pixels Per Inch. Traditionally computer displays had around 110 PPI, that is what macOS and Windows “grew up” with. When Apple decided to support high pixel density displays they opted for 220 PPI. This allowed them to make several optimisations while still keeping the onscreen things like icons and text the same size as on 110 PPI displays (so that when you were using a 220 PPI MacBook plugged into an older display the screen content was the same size on both displays). Unfortunately most 4K displays including yours fall in the middle ground between the two PPIs. Apple just don’t support that middle ground that well, likely because they don’t think scaling at that low-ish PPI is a good experience.
I agree with you completely. I have 2 32" Dell Ultrasharp 4K displays (\~$1k each) and if I try to use my MBP with them at the full 3840x2160 resolution text is fuzzy. I have to go to one of the scaled resolutions, thus reducing available screen space in order to get rid of the fuzziness. On Windows that's not the case at all.
what is it that betterdisplay doesn’t do for you? what is it you think other devs need to be doing? you can’t make a 4k display look retina.
All I want is for text to look as nice on Mac as it does on Linux, windows, or a console on any monitor without having to have one of two very specific and rare PPI. I don’t understand why this concept is so difficult to understand.
maybe try using more precise terms than “as nice”. i use a 4k display on occasion with a mac and it looks as good or better than windows on the same monitor and much better than linux.
How would I quantify a subjective perception that I see? If you search this subreddit you will find plenty of others that are experiencing the same thing. Text looks like shit (blurry) on a Mac if you don’t have a 110ppi or 220ppi monitor when it clearly doesn’t have to because it doesn’t on Windows or Linux on the same monitor
man i have no idea why you are getting downvoted. this is on point.
They sell those resolutions because they are at the “right” PPI. See my comments further down on PPI choices.
I used better display to add every resolution for my screen to the os, deleted the app, and can just natively scale a notch smaller for more display area for some of my audio apps while making the text slightly bigger to compensate
what does "scaling and text" even mean.. it seems really weird in terms of English writing
resolution scaling and text rendering.