BetterDisplay
awesome-mac
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BetterDisplay | awesome-mac | |
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200 | 27 | |
15,427 | 70,239 | |
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8.7 | 8.8 | |
19 days ago | 6 days ago | |
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BetterDisplay
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Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
2. "BetterDisplay" for better scaling quality on bigger screens, especially if you have a 4k ultrawide. https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay
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Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
It isn't a device, it's a software tool. It doesn't make the monitor magically 2x the resolution; it can trick macos to render onto a 5k buffer and then downscale the output to the physical display so it looks not-broken.
https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay
I'm not saying that it'll make 4k look good. I'm saying macOS is unusable on native resolutions - everything is either too small or too blurry, so a 4k display won't do me any good. 25x14 is the sweet spot for me, but I guess Apple decided I'm holding it wrong.
- MacOS tools to make your life easier
- Hacking the LG Monitor's EDID
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Mac Mouse Fix: Do the things you do on a trackpad. Without a trackpad
Totally unrelated, but since we are talking about QOL tools on macOS, i thoroughly recommend BetterDisplay[0]
It enables reting scaling functionality on any external monitor, regardless of the resolution or the Apple compatibility.
It's great for 2k monitors that are totally hiDPI but are not deemed enough by Apple, and even for FHD secondarh displays that don't need that much display real state so you can use that real state to scale everything nicely.
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A collection of useful Mac Apps
Better Display is another I run on startup. I have a 1440p 144hz monitor and using the default options in the Display System Settings at native resolution it is too small, retina makes it 720p which makes everything too large, and scaled resolutions are fuzzy. This let me find the sweet spot for me which was 1600x900 - not too small or too big and also not fuzzy. It was not available as a selection using the standard Mac System Settings.
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Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?
No, HDMI 2.1 doesn't matter (yet) because there are no 8K desktop monitors (meaning 32-inch size or similar) on the market that use HDMI.
The only 8K monitor has for years been the Dell UP3218K, which uses DisplayPort -- and requires two DisplayPort cables, actually, to get 7680 × 4320 at 60Hz.
Apple has never supported this on any of their machines -- they just couldn't drive the monitor. (It worked, but only in 4K mode.)
They quietly changed this with the M2 machines. I had a MacBook Pro M1 Max that couldn't drive this monitor at 8K. Then I found this GitHub thread[1] where it was revealed that M2 Pro can drive up to one of these 8K displays over Thunderbolt (to DisplayPort). And the M2 Ultra on a Mac Pro or Mac Studio can drive 3 of them.
I don't think it is scaling, per se, but rather that Apple has never supported the full DisplayPort spec. That 8K monitor apparently needs support for something called "dual SST" and Apple never supported that in their software. More details are in the linked GitHub discussion.
So, I don't know why they didn't make this work on the M1 Ultra, too, but Apple gonna Apple. So I went down to the Apple Store and bought a Mac Studio M2 Ultra the day I read that. Now I can plug my Mac into my KVM switch and use this monitor on Mac just like I always could with Linux and Windows.
[1]: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/discussions/199#d...
OS X not only uses a lame hack to scale, it completely muddles the issue by introducing the concept of "HiDPI". Somehow I can set my 4K monitor to use "native resolution" at 3840 x 2160, and yet the UI and fonts look fuzzy! Absolutely terrible, and a complete embarrassment for Apple imo since they are supposedly the UI kings.
For me, I only closed the book on the issue after finding BetterDisplay [0]. Basically a 3rd party program that gives you complete control over resolution, display density, and a ton of other options on MacOS. It has a trial mode but it is well well worth the money. With that + the CLI tweak to set font smoothing to 0, the 4K experience on MacOS looks decent. You can even decrease the effective scale of the native screen past "More Space", so those of us with good eyes can actually take advantage of the screen real estate.
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Monitor choices
Also for 4k and 5k2k Ultrawide’s Better Display is a great free enhancement. There’s also a paid version. Better Display
Theres also free apps that give you more scaling options, like BetterDisplay.
awesome-mac
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macOS 13.5 no longer allows setting system wide ulimits
A large number of extremely talented engineers might beg to differ. Everything you listed as an issue has a solution. Like any operating system, you have to spend the time to learn the intricacies of how it works and to customize it to your liking. For me, must haves are Alfred to replace spotlight, my dotfiles which change a ton of defaults in various apps like finder, the dock, etc, setup key repeat, iterm2 colors and profile, etc. divvy and magnet for window management. Caffeine to prevent sleep. Stats open source menu monitors to replace istatmenus
I’m sure there are newer equivalents to what I’ve listed. I’ve been using those programs for years.
Some jumping off points
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Tips for a first time owner ?
Have a look at these lists for more of the things you are looking for: https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac
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Just got MBP M1 Pro. Any tips for me?
I guess the awesome Mac list is a solid place to start generally speaking, since there are a lot of apps of all kinds of use cases in there. Personally, I especially love - Raycast (replacement for spotlight, check out Alfred as well) - Bartender (to tidy up the menu bar) - AltTab (gives you a Windows like app switcher) - Rectangle (windows like window management) - purepaste (let’s you paste text without formatting)
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My loved one. What would you install on fresh new MacBook ?
I always reference this great repo: https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac
- Best apps for a newbie to not miss ? I am going to use my first ever MBP I need recommendations please to make most of the machine
- Crowdsourced database of your favourite apps for the mac
- Ask HN: Must have tools for a new MacBook
- What’s up guys I need some noob advice lol
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Must Have Apps, Free or Paid -
I often refer to the comprehensive Awesome Mac list for this because you can drill down to specific sections such as Finder Tools for example. It's very handy.
- What are some of the best (free/paid) apps for Mac?
What are some alternatives?
MonitorControl - 🖥 Control your display's brightness & volume on your Mac as if it was a native Apple Display. Use Apple Keyboard keys or custom shortcuts. Shows the native macOS OSDs.
Lunar - Intelligent adaptive brightness for your external monitors
displayplacer - macOS command line utility to configure multi-display resolutions and arrangements. Essentially XRandR for macOS.
BetterDummy - Unlock your displays on your Mac! Smooth scaling, HiDPI unlock, XDR/HDR extra brightness upscale, DDC, brightness and dimming, dummy displays, PIP and lots more! [Moved to: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay]
awesome-macos-command-line - Use your macOS terminal shell to do awesome things.
Opencore-Legacy-Patcher - [Moved to: https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher]
open-source-mac-os-apps - 🚀 Awesome list of open source applications for macOS. https://t.me/s/opensourcemacosapps
hyperfine - A command-line benchmarking tool
RDM - Easily set Mac Retina display to higher unsupported resolutions
awesome-cli-apps - 🖥 📊 🕹 🛠 A curated list of command line apps
ohmyzsh - 🙃 A delightful community-driven (with 2,200+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration. Includes 300+ optional plugins (rails, git, macOS, hub, docker, homebrew, node, php, python, etc), 140+ themes to spice up your morning, and an auto-update tool so that makes it easy to keep up with the latest updates from the community.
awesome-shell - A curated list of awesome command-line frameworks, toolkits, guides and gizmos. Inspired by awesome-php.