My experience switching to MacOS and optimizing a 4K monitor

[Guest /u/PassengerPigeon343]

I am a lifelong Windows user and just bought my first Mac, a MacBook Air 15" M3 16GB/512GB in Silver. I plan to use it on the go sometimes but really wanted to use it at home on my existing setup. I contemplated a M4 Mac Mini, but opted for this for the portability option.

 

Anyway, once I set up my external monitor, I was initially not happy with how my 4K display looked, especially next to the incredible built-in display on the MacBook. The colors were washed out, the text wasn't clear, and it was significantly worse-looking than the built-in display. I went down a rabbit hole and made several tweaks to get it optimized and now it looks amazing. I figured that this post may help someone else who is looking to do a similar set up or is trying to tweak their 4K display to look its best.

 

* Disclaimer: I am not an expert, just someone who spent a few hours working on this and am happy with the results. Others may have more to contribute.

 

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For my setup, I have a 28" 4K Philips Display and am using a Lenovo ThinkPad USB-C Hybrid Dock (40AF0135US) with the latest Firmware. I have used this for a while with both my work and personal laptops, both Windows machines. These steps would work for a direct connection to an external monitor too.

 

To get set up, because of my dock, I had to install DisplayLink Drivers for MacOS from the Synaptics website which got the second display working. For the record, once that is installed, the dock works perfectly with the M3 Air, including charging.

 

After that, it just didn't look right and I made several tweaks to the monitor settings and in MacOS that changed everything and now it looks amazing. Almost as good as the built-in display. Here's what I did:

 

1. Enable HiDPI resolutions: This is a feature of DisplayLink that needs to be turned on, but can also be done through other apps like BetterDisplay if you're not using g a dock. Once enabled, I set my 4K monitor to the 1440p setting which is actually the OS rendering everything to 5120 x 2880 (2x 1440p) and then scaling down to fit the screen. This improved things a bit but some things were still off.
   
2. Strip out monitor settings: I went to a basic 80% Brightness, 50% Contrast, 50% Sharpness, 2.2 Gamma, and turned off all color modes, SmartContrast/SmartUniformity and all other Smart and monitor-specific features. That way I was getting the most raw form of the monitor without adjustment.
   
3. Color adjustment: Make sure MacOS Display settings have the monitor set to its default color profile, mine was the model # of the monitor. With the monitors side by side, I tweaked the color in the monitor's settings. While it looked good in sRGB, it didn't allow brightness adjustment and was still a little off. Instead I set custom RGB to R-100, G-100, B-95 very closely resembled the tone on the built-in display. Different monitors may vary in the adjustments and values needed to look like the Mac display.
   
4. Font Smoothing: Even with the colors right, I struggled with the sharpness. I could only achieve too fuzzy or too harsh, and couldn't get the right balance. The color was vivid and nice, but the text just looked off no matter what I changed. Ultimately I kept the monitor sharpness at 50 which was too fuzzy and found the answer in two commands. I turned on CGFontRenderingFontSmoothing and turned on AppleFontSmoothing to 1 which makes the text sharper with minimal anti-aliasing. AppleFontSmoothing can also be set to 2 or 3, but 1 achieved the result I was hoping for. This setting has no noticeable impact not the built-in display but absolutely transformed the text on the external display. Here are the steps I took:
   
   • Open Terminal and paste/execute each of the below commands
     
   • [iCODE]defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO[/iCODE]
     
   • [iCODE]defaults write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 1[/iCODE]
     
   • Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
     

 

For me, the above adjustments changed everything, especially the final step. I was pretty unhappy with the 4K monitor initially and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I worried I'd have to drop a huge amount of money on a Studio Display to be happy with it, but this got me to where I needed to be. I may make additional small tweaks here and there, but I am very happy now. Hopefully this helps someone else and you can benefit from the hours I put into this. If you have any other tips, feel free to comment them.

 

submitted by /u/PassengerPigeon343

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