Is there a way of setting a 'fixed' 120Hz refresh rate on the new MacBook Pros?

[bryanrs]

The ProMotion setting in display settings is adaptive refresh rate, it's not a fixed 120Hz refresh rate. Is there not an option to set the Macbook Pro to a fixed rate 120Hz? I understand this would lower the battery life but honestly the battery life is so amazing on this thing that it wouldn't be a problem for me. They could just put a little warning bubble that says "fixed 120Hz refresh rate will result in lower battery life. Continue?"

At the very least they should give us the option of having the display go up to fixed 120Hz refresh rate when running off wall power...

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

No

 

[The Game 161]

Not an apple thing to do…

 

[bryanrs]

Hopefully they do give us this option soon. This is a laptop aimed at professionals after all... When it's plugged into wall power, you should be able to have it at a fixed 120Hz refresh rate instead of adaptive/variable refresh rate. Windows 11 lets you do this with the 'Surface laptop studio' and Surface pro 8...

 

[jav6454]

None that I know off. Any reason as to why you need it?

 

[Technerd108]

The ProMotion setting in display settings is adaptive refresh rate, it's not a fixed 120Hz refresh rate. Is there not an option to set the Macbook Pro to a fixed rate 120Hz? I understand this would lower the battery life but honestly the battery life is so amazing on this thing that it wouldn't be a problem for me. They could just put a little warning bubble that says "fixed 120Hz refresh rate will result in lower battery life. Continue?"

At the very least they should give us the option of having the display go up to fixed 120Hz refresh rate when running off wall power...

I think the problem you are experiencing has nothing to do with ProMotion. You want the 120hz refresh rate to be on all the time because you probably feel like you don't feel the screen is as smooth as it should be??

This is not caused by the refresh rate but the poor response time of the mini led screen. It causes text blur even at high refresh rate.

Apple will never allow a toggle for Pro-Motion because it won't change your perception of the screen and it adjusts to what you are doing faster than you can tell. In theory it adjusts so fast when you can benefit from higher refresh rate it is already there and when you don't it has already clocked down. It is imperceptible.

This is the advantage of Pro-Motion. If you look at an iPhone with Pro-Motion the screen always feels and looks smooth no matter what you are doing. Compare the screen of an iPhone with Pro-Motion to your MBP and you will see what I am talking about. On the Phone it will always look smooth vs. the Laptop which doesn't always look smooth and this has nothing to do with Pro-Motion but the screen technology in the two devices and the respective response times.

 

[bryanrs]

I think the problem you are experiencing has nothing to do with ProMotion. You want the 120hz refresh rate to be on all the time because you probably feel like you don't feel the screen is as smooth as it should be??

This is not caused by the refresh rate but the poor response time of the mini led screen. It causes text blur even at high refresh rate.

Apple will never allow a toggle for Pro-Motion because it won't change your perception of the screen and it adjusts to what you are doing faster than you can tell. In theory it adjusts so fast when you can benefit from higher refresh rate it is already there and when you don't it has already clocked down. It is imperceptible.

This is the advantage of Pro-Motion. If you look at an iPhone with Pro-Motion the screen always feels and looks smooth no matter what you are doing. Compare the screen of an iPhone with Pro-Motion to your MBP and you will see what I am talking about. On the Phone it will always look smooth vs. the Laptop which doesn't always look smooth and this has nothing to do with Pro-Motion but the screen technology in the two devices and the respective response times.

But the iPhone 12, which is a 60Hz OLED, always feels and looks smooth as well... The problem with these adaptive frame rate implementations is that, yes, even though the iPhone 13 Pro and 14 Pro always look smooth (just like the iPhone 12), you can still see and 'feel' that it's not quite 120Hz all the time. To say it's imperceptible is just not true! On the iPhone 13 Pro/14 Pro you notice it mostly when you start scrolling. If the screen is static long enough the display goes down to 10Hz, and when you start scrolling it does take a moment to ramp up to 60Hz and above. To make it truly imperceptible, they would have to switch the refresh rate from 10Hz to 120Hz in less than 8.3ms and I don't think this is even possible at the moment. If it is, Apple hasn't implemented this in the iPhone 13 Pro or 14 Pro yet.

You may be right about the stupid mini LED display on the macbook pro though. Which means we have 2 different things contributing to the 2nd class quasi-120Hz experience on the MacBook Pro: mini LED AND we're forced to have "adaptive" refresh rate instead of a fixed 120Hz refresh rate.

 

[rowey]

I've hacked a way to fix the refresh to 120Hz as long as the dock is showing. I've done this as refresh rates under 100Hz give me a headache.

1. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht/ widget manager
2. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht-widgets/#SmoothAnalogClock_widget widget

^ as long as the hands of the clock are turning and on a screen it maxes out the refresh rate

This is optional, but I then made the clock all black (I have a pure black desktop), the height of my dock, and placed it the bottom left of my screen by editing the widget code. So it's always on screen, but not visible for me as long as all my windows are above the dock.

Only tested it on a 16" MacBook M3 Max using Quartz Debug from 'Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_15'.

It adds around 8% load to the GPU on my MacBook, and battery performance seems fine to me.

 

[bryanrs]

Ya it's really disappointing especially because Apple very much markets these computers to professionals yet they don't allow us to set the refresh rate to a fixed 120Hz? Obviously there will be a hit to battery life but surely if this a computer aimed at professionals, we are qualified to and should be allowed to make that decision for ourselves? Trying to work on high frame rate content while the refresh rate is dancing around is a mess. On Windows you just set it to 120Hz and it's fine. That battery life isn't even bad!

 

[nacher1894]

I've hacked a way to fix the refresh to 120Hz as long as the dock is showing. I've done this as refresh rates under 100Hz give me a headache.

1. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht/ widget manager
2. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht-widgets/#SmoothAnalogClock_widget widget

^ as long as the hands of the clock are turning and on a screen it maxes out the refresh rate

This is optional, but I then made the clock all black (I have a pure black desktop), the height of my dock, and placed it the bottom left of my screen by editing the widget code. So it's always on screen, but not visible for me as long as all my windows are above the dock.

Only tested it on a 16" MacBook M3 Max using Quartz Debug from 'Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_15'.

It adds around 8% load to the GPU on my MacBook, and battery performance seems fine to me.

Should the clock be kept visible? As in the image I attached

 

[rowey]

Should the clock be kept visible? As in the image I attached

Yes, if covered or moved outside of the screen it doesn’t affect the refresh

 

[pdoherty]

Not an apple thing to do…

"Apple reserves the right to degrade your experience whenever we feel like it."

 

[nacher1894]

Yes, if covered or moved outside of the screen it doesn’t affect the refresh

thank you very much. I was tired of the frame drops, it has improved a lot the fluidity although I still notice that there are animations like the change of space that sometimes seems to have small jumps. I have Quartz Debug counting FPS and with the widget I see that they stay close to the refresh rate of my monitors (144hz) but it is not quite fixed. When I switch between spaces for example it drops about 5-10 frames.

I don't really understand why on the Iphone I feel everything so fluid and not here.

Greetings!

 

[rowey]

Interesting, I assumed the hack would only raise the refresh rate on MacBook ProMotion screens.

On iPhones with ProMotion I get the same eye strain. I get around it by screen recording which fixes the refresh at 120Hz too.

 

[cigz]

I've hacked a way to fix the refresh to 120Hz as long as the dock is showing. I've done this as refresh rates under 100Hz give me a headache.

1. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht/ widget manager
2. Install the https://tracesof.net/uebersicht-widgets/#SmoothAnalogClock_widget widget

^ as long as the hands of the clock are turning and on a screen it maxes out the refresh rate

This is optional, but I then made the clock all black (I have a pure black desktop), the height of my dock, and placed it the bottom left of my screen by editing the widget code. So it's always on screen, but not visible for me as long as all my windows are above the dock.

Only tested it on a 16" MacBook M3 Max using Quartz Debug from 'Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_15'.

It adds around 8% load to the GPU on my MacBook, and battery performance seems fine to me.

I just tried that and wow... running static 120hz definitely makes a difference.
I was trying to search for any way to force 120hz to run all the time because since Sonoma 14.6 I'm seeing a lot of choppiness in animations, especially when swiping between spaces. It literally looks worse than on my 2 core 2016 MacBook Pro and I realised that it's promotion's fault. Now that I have this "hack" turned on, there's literally no stutters or choppiness in animations.

I really don't understand why won't they make static 120hz an option, even if that would be available only when plugged in.
There's people that use 120hz+ monitors, not 60hz Studio Display so it'd be nice to have all of them run at the same refresh rate.