All resolutions & All refresh rates for External Displays on MBP M1 MAX

You can see all the available resolutions in System Settings. Go to System Settings > Displays > Advanced. Enable the option for "Show resolutions as list" then click Done. Then, back in the Displays window, enable "Show all resolutions."

You can see all the available refresh rates in the Displays panel by clicking the dropdown box next to "Refresh rate."

FWIW, I believe the content of these lists is sensitive to (i.e. dependent on) whatever display is connected at the time and you are viewing the lists for.

Following is from the Display Support section of MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support:

• Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and
  • Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or
  • Up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)
• HDMI digital video output
  • Support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz

And a bit of friendly advice ... back off your demanding tone. We are all fellow users here supporting each other.

PaulIrving wrote:

Second, I cannot see all the available resolutions in System Settings. Go to System Settings > Displays > Advanced. Enable the option for "Show resolutions as list" then click Done. Then, back in the Displays window, enable "Show all resolutions" since I am currently researching my options to what to purchase as I do not have any external displays connected at this time, so your suggestion is not helpful at all.

Apple does not document every possible combination of resolution, refresh rate, and interface method. The Technical Specifications for a particular Mac will give you a general idea of the limits of its support, but won't answer the questions of

• Are higher refresh rates available for lower-resolution displays? (E.g., if the specifications say that you are allowed to have a display with "up to 6K resolution at 60 Hz", can you attach a 1080p display which has a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz – and run it at 120 Hz?)
• Exactly how the limits apply when you are using a Retina "looks like" mode, where the drawing canvas has double the number of pixels in each direction as the nominal Settings > Displays "resolution".

Sometimes the Support articles about connecting displays to a particular type of Mac will mention refresh rate options not listed in the Technical Specifications, but this is not always the case, and even then, you won't find tables listing every possible combination for every possible display.

Last, the following information is also useless as it was not what I wanted or needed to know.

What you want to know is not available.

If you believe my tone was demanding, well then you didn't need to respond. You wasted your time and mine offering me absolutely no helpful information at all.

There is no call for you to speak in this way to MartinR – a Forum contributor who was trying to help you out with accurate information, backed up by a link to Apple's own Technical Specifications.

Seems to me that this would fall under the category of "shooting the messenger because you don't care for the message."

<< I want to know ALL resolutions and ALL refresh rates when using USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 connections and HDMI port? >>

That depends strongly on several factors. The first is the capabilities of your Mac.

Since these display protocols are running very near the limits of the switching speeds of the dual-rail logic in use, exactly what connection protocol {HDMI, USB-C, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt} also makes a strong difference, as does the length of the cables you are trying to use.

as MartinR has indicated, the Direct HDMI port on the M1 series Macs is limited to 4K at 60 Hz, because it supports only HDMI 2.0. this will work ONLY with PREMIUM high speed HDMI cables. Cables "found" behind your TV set are unlikely to work at all.

Later Macs used a more advanced version, HDMI 2.1, which supports higher resolutions but requires certified ULTRA high speed HDMI cables.

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USB-C and ThunderBolt support versions of DisplayPort inside a USB-C or Thunderbolt envelope.

Because the data rate of USB-C is strongly less than ThunderBolt, DisplayPort data rates over USB-C (about 14.4 G bits/sec) top out at 4K at 81 Hz for 8 bits/color of 4K at 65 Hz for 10 bits/color. At these data rates, USB-C cables are limited to ONE meter, maximum.

For Thunderbolt cables, If the display maker has chosen to support the higher DsiaplayPort 2.0 standard at UHBR10 at 38.88 G bits/sec, standard, that supports a 6K display at 8 bits/color, at about 70 Hz. it appears to support a 6K display at 10 bits/color at 60 Hz,  but with NO margin of error (so it is possible it does not quite work with certain displays). At these higher speeds, Thunderbolt cables for this use are limited to 0.5 meters maximum, unless you decide to purchase ACTIVE Thunderbolt cables, which are much more expensive (starting at about US$125).

This information is from a M1 Max Mac Studio with a 4K monitor connected via USB-C (DisplayPort Alt Mode). The maximum refresh rate with this monitor is 60 Hz, and I believe that would apply to any 4K monitor connected in this fashion. I have no information on whether higher refresh rates are available with lower resolutions. The old version of this Apple Support article which refers to the M1 {Max, Ultra} Mac Studios has no extra refresh rate information.

Connect a display to Mac Studio - Apple Support

Because the capabilities of any Apple Silicon Mac are very strongly influenced by which particular Apple Silicon chip is inside it, this very likely predicts what you would see with a M1 Max MacBook Pro with the same monitor, or with a similar monitor.

Retina "like 2560x1440" mode maps to a 5K drawing canvas, and Retina "like 3008x1692" mode maps to a 6K one. So the M1 Max chip in this Mac supports two modes ("like 3200x1800" and "like 3360x1890") in which the drawing canvas has more horizontal resolution than the LCD panel of an Apple 32" 6K Pro Display XDR. From other threads, I get the impression that some later M-series chips, especially "plain" ones, may not support that.

I believe that the Mac and the monitor both support DisplayPort v1.4. This means that the USB-C cable can carry a USB 3.0 connection to the monitor's hub ports, and 4K @ 60 Hz video, at the same time. With DisplayPort v1.2, the available bandwidth might have forced a choice between 60 Hz / USB 2.0 speed and 30 Hz / USB 3.0 speed.

The Mac does not rely on Windows-like side-loaded "Drivers" which are actually packages of resolutions and settings for a specific display. Instead, it goes straight to the immutable source -- it asks the display itself.

To get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display. "No signal detected" is generated by the DISPLAY, not by the Mac.

This query is only sent at certain times:

• at startup

• at wake from sleep — so momentarily sleeping and waking your Mac may work

• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go

• hold the Option key while you click on the (Detect Display) button that will appear in Displays preferences (from another display)

Some displays support ONLY HDMI inputs. When converting USB-C to HDMI, the resolutions attainable are no higher than 4K.

The higher voltages used by HDMI make it VERY difficult to convert ThunderBolt to HDMI at higher than 4K resolution. IF you can find any such adapters, they will get 'burn your skin' HOT and are likely to fail unreasonably quickly.

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If a display has multiple inputs and supports Picture-By-Picture (cousin of Picture-in-Picture), the Mac easily supports running the left half and right half of a large display using two cable. This sounds clumsy, but readers support that once set up, it works as ONE seamless display, no artifacts or loss of features.

The "looks like" resolutions used when you invoke "Scaled" display resolutions have not even been mentioned yet. That adds yet another layer of complexity, we could also discuss.

As you can see, the complexity of these issues means your query as stated can not be answered directly.

What make&model display(s) are you considering connecting to your M1 Mac?

What sort of work do you expect to do with these displays? {web surfing, Photo editing, Video editing, Solid modeling, stress analysis, other}

is this the information you were looking for?

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

Display Support

Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

• Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or
• Up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)

Thunderbolt 4 digital video output

• Native DisplayPort output over USB‑C
• VGA, HDMI, DVI, and Thunderbolt 2 output supported using adapters (sold separately)

HDMI digital video output

• Support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz
• DVI output using HDMI to DVI Adapter (sold separately)