Temporal Dithering eyestrain / fatigue
Hi all,
The purpose of this post is to raise awareness, help each other, and unify our voice regarding the (alleged) adverse health effects of temporal dithering.
I will frequently update this thread with resources and interesting finds.
Apple support advised me to leave feedback. So please do so as well through this link: https://www.apple.com/feedback/
Ask Apple to offer an accessibility option to disable temporal dithering.
Also, please share with us:
1- your experience and symptoms
2- your computer model
3- the GPU used in your computer
4- did anything work to help?
5- do you have any resources for this (is it really temporal dithering? other potential culprits?...)
I will start with my experience:
I am a longtime user of screens, primarily Apple products. I only started having problems when I recently got the new 13" 2020 MacBook Pro (Intel Iris Plus Graphics). I got terrible eye strain and headaches from using the computer for a few hours. No other device has ever caused me similar issues, and even now other devices (e.g. iPad Air 2, iMac 2017, Sony Xperia phone...etc) don't cause me issues.
My struggle with this new screen was to the extent that after using the computer for ~4 hours , it felt like I could see but my mind could no longer properly process what I was seeing! I got really scared because it felt like I was blind while I could actually see (really hard to explain).
I did my research and a few people blamed temporal dithering of being the culprit. I contacted Apple support, and they said we can't disable temporal dithering, but they suggested changing the scaling of the display and the color profile. These suggestions did not solve the problem, although changing the scaling made me a bit more comfortable to use the screen - but still it is not optimal and the strain/fatigue effects are still there.
Thanks! Hopefully we can figure out a solution for this together soon!
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar